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Social Issues
The Associated Press and MPR News Staff

States like Minnesota honoring indigenous people instead of Columbus

Anishinabe Academy students march in an Indigenous People's Day parade.
Students from the Anishinabe Academy in Minneapolis march in an Indigenous People's day parade in St. Paul on Oct. 8, 2018. The parade marched from the American Indian Magnet School to Indian Mounds Regional Park.
Evan Frost | MPR News

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A handful of states are celebrating their first Indigenous Peoples Day on Monday as part of a trend to move away from a day honoring Christopher Columbus.

From Minnesota to Vermont, at least five states and Washington, D.C., have done away with Columbus Day celebrations in deference to Native Americans, though the federal Columbus Day remains in place.

Several Minnesota cities, including Minneapolis and St. Paul, began formally recognizing Indigenous Peoples Day as early as 2014.

Since 1992, Native American advocates have pressed states to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day over concerns that Columbus helped launched centuries of genocide against indigenous populations in the Americas.

New Mexico is marking its statewide Indigenous Peoples Day with an invocation by several tribal leaders in unison in their native languages. There also will be a parade and traditional dances at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque.

"I think it's great and it's about time," said All Pueblo Council of Governors Chairman E. Paul Torres, a member of Isleta Pueblo in New Mexico.

State offices in Maine also were scheduled to close for the holiday. Maine, home to four federally recognized tribes, ditched Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous Peoples Day with an April bill signing by Democratic Gov. Janet Mills.

She said at the time she hoped the move would represent a move "toward healing, toward inclusiveness." Tribes in Maine have had a rocky relationship with the state government over the years, and the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy tribes withdrew representatives to the Legislature in 2015, when Republican Gov. Paul LePage was in office.

The change to Indigenous Peoples Day prompted some backlash in conservative circles and among Italian Americans. University of Maine College Republicans, for example, have described the move as part of a "radical left-wing agenda."

But Native Americans in some states have welcomed the change and said it was time to pay homage to Native Americans instead of Columbus.

Democratic New Mexico state Rep. Derrick Lente of Sandia Pueblo, the sponsor of the New Mexico legislation that changed the holiday to Indigenous Peoples Day, said the day allows reflection on the United States' complicated history. Adopting the holiday, he said, provides some restorative justice for indigenous communities.