At Thursday’s Cabinet meeting, President Donald Trump held aloft a freshly signed proclamation like a relic from another century: Columbus Day, officially restored “under the same rules, dates, and locations” as decades past. “We’re back, Italians,” he declared, beaming. “We love the Italians.” But for many Americans particularly Indigenous communities the holiday has never been about Italian pride. It’s a wound. And Trump’s move to “reclaim” Christopher Columbus’s legacy as one of “faith, courage, perseverance, and virtue” has reignited a long-simmering national reckoning over who gets to define history, and whose pain gets erased in the process.
Columbus Day was never just about discovery. President Benjamin Harrison first proclaimed it in 1892 as a diplomatic olive branch after a mob in New Orleans lynched 11 Italian immigrants a crime that nearly ruptured U.S.-Italy relations. Franklin Roosevelt made it a federal holiday in 1934, cementing its place in the American calendar. For generations of Italian Americans, it became a symbol of hard-won acceptance in a nation that once saw them as outsiders. “Viva Italia!” cheered Rep. Mike Lawler, a New York Republican and Italian American. But for Native scholars like Kerri Malloy of San José State University, the holiday celebrates a man whose arrival “triggered a mass genocide of Indigenous people throughout the Western hemisphere” through disease, enslavement, land theft, and forced conversion. Trump’s proclamation makes no mention of this duality.
Notably absent from Trump’s proclamation is any reference to Indigenous Peoples Day—a counter-observance first adopted by Berkeley, California, in 1992 and now recognized in 17 states and Washington, D.C. In 2021, President Biden became the first U.S. leader to formally acknowledge it alongside Columbus Day. Trump’s document, however, frames critics as “left-wing arsonists” bent on “destroy[ing] [Columbus’] name and dishonor[ing] his memory.” Matthew Fletcher, director of the Indigenous Law and Policy Center at Michigan State University, called the language “trolling.” “This isn’t about history,” he said. “It’s about signaling to a base that sees multiculturalism as a threat.”
Despite the White House’s stance, the ground has shifted. In Albuquerque, schools hold land acknowledgment ceremonies. In Seattle, city workers get the day off to honor Native heritage. Even in Italian-American strongholds like Boston, some community leaders now support dual recognition. “You can celebrate your ancestry without denying someone else’s trauma,” said one Bronx-based educator. Fletcher emphasized that Indigenous Peoples Day isn’t going anywhere: “It’s local, it’s tribal, it’s statewide in a lot of places, and it’s still going to be a legitimate thing.” The federal proclamation may fly over Washington, but it won’t silence the drum circles, language revivals, and storytelling gatherings happening from Pine Ridge to Honolulu.
Trump’s order mandates that the U.S. flag be displayed on all public buildings Monday a visual assertion of unity that many see as deeply fractured. Columbus never set foot on what is now U.S. soil; he landed in the Bahamas in 1492, then sailed to the Caribbean and Central America. His voyages ushered in centuries of colonial violence. Yet the myth of the noble explorer endures in textbooks, parades, and presidential proclamations. As Italian-American pride and Indigenous resilience collide on the same calendar date, the nation is left with a question no decree can answer: Can a country honor its immigrant stories without erasing the people who were here first?
This Columbus Day, federal offices will close. Parades will roll through Little Italy. And in tribal communities across the country, people will gather to remember ancestors, teach children their languages, and affirm that they are still here despite everything. The Pew Research Center notes that 30 states still observe Columbus Day in some form, while others have moved toward dual recognition. That tension between celebration and reckoning, between myth and memory is not a flaw in American democracy. It’s the work of it. History isn’t a statue to be toppled or a flag to be raised—it’s a conversation we’re still learning how to have.
0 Comments