Newton Considers Renaming Columbus Day To Indigenous People's Day

NEWTON, MA — Should Newton exchange Columbus Day for Indigenous People's Day now that details about Columbus's past have come to light? The Newton City Council has heard from hundreds of people on the topic since councilors Emily Norton and Vicki Danburg brought it up last year.

"With all the increased focus of racial equity and the need for righting historic wrongs, and the continued outreach from residents, including students and young people, it seemed like now was an appropriate time to raise this again," Norton told Patch recently.

Norton was among eight councilors —including councilors Jake Auchincloss, Alicia Bowman, Becky Grossman, Bill Humphrey, Josh Krinzman, Brenda Noel and Ryan — requesting the holiday change.

The city council was set to vote Monday on that, but at the last moment and in spite of concerns that the hearing could turn ugly, the council decided to ask for more residents to weigh in, in the form of a public hearing that will be held some time after this year's Oct. 12 holiday.

Christopher Columbus, hailed for centuries as a conquering hero who discovered America, has been under fire for years as details of his legacy become more widely known. Historians say the explorer was a brutalizer who ushered in the genocide of millions of indigenous people.

A handful of other cities and towns — including Brookline, Cambridge, Somerville and Amherst — have pulled the plug on Columbus Day altogether. Other communities from Melrose to Waltham are considering a change.

A sticking point for many Italian Americans has been that Columbus Day has come to embody Italian American pride, even if steeped in myth. Italian Americans were subject to vicious bigotry, discriminated against and treated violently, even lynched, for decades. Putting an Italian face on the hero of America's origin story gave them a real sense of cultural pride and a stake on being an American. Congress curtailed Italian immigration on racial grounds in the 1920s, even though Italians were legally white. In 1965, Italian-Americans campaigned to overturn racist restrictions using the Columbus icon to their advantage.

For many, especially those who are old enough to remember discrimination, that's what's at heart here.

"This is very personal for me," Councilor-at-Large Lenny Gentile, a third generation Italian, said Monday. "As an Italian American, it is an insult to me and it’s an insult to a lot of other residents of the city of Newton. The complete elimination of a holiday that has come to represent a celebration of people's Italian heritage is insulting."

Councilor Maria Scibelli Greenberg, a first generation Italian American, said she recognized that Columbus' history was not worth celebrating, but argued that the holiday has evolved — similarly to St. Patrick's Day, which now is a celebration of Irish not a saint— to one that honored Italian Americans.

"I fail to understand how trying to correct the harm done to indigenous people with another wrong of dismissing Italian Americans is a fair or ideal solution," she said Monday.

Several members of Newton's Italian-American community echoed that sentiment.

But during the Programs and Services Committee meeting last week at least one Newton resident who identifies as Taino, an indigenous Caribbean, said that by continuing to have a day named for Columbus, causes pain.

"It pains us deeply that there are people that continue to defend Columbus,” said Newton resident Darlene Flores, an Army veteran and indigenous Taino Caribbean.

Columbus was, for a short while, governor of the island of Hispaniola (now Dominican Republic and Haiti), and ordered the enslavement and murder of large numbers of native Taino people there, according to historians.

Norton said now that historians and Newton have helped shed light on Columbus, the community can't just look away.

"When is the right time to right a historical wrong and start to make things right for the folks whose land we took?" she told Patch. "We are going to have to do it at some point, we might as well do it sooner rather than later."

Brookline Changes Columbus Day To 'Indigenous People's Day... (2017)

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