Newton Votes To Change Columbus Day To Indigenous Peoples' Day

NEWTON, MA —Newton city council on Nov. 2 voted to change the name of the holiday celebrated on the second Monday in October from Columbus Day to Indigenous People's Day.

Newton joins the likes of Brookline, Cambridge, Somerville and Amherst, which have all exchanged Columbus Day for Indigenous People's Day in recent years.

"It is now in the hands of the Mayor to change it on City Calendars," Newton City Clerk David Olson said.

"I’ve begun to understand how blind I was to the violence and pain brought to the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, and the deep hurt that the continued celebration of Columbus causes to Indigenous People today," Newton Mayor Ruthanne Fuller said in a statement after the vote, which included an amendment to find a different way and day to honor the heritage of Italian Americans.

Fuller said in light of what she has learned about Columbus amid conversation regarding the change, she said she is glad the city is making the move.

"This is another step on our journey to make sure our core values of respect, diversity and acceptance are more fully realized in Newton in our words, symbols and actions," she said. "We will not reject our tradition of honoring Italian Americans but instead adapt to our better understanding of history."

The move was first proposed in 2019, and was brought back in September, but there was pushback from a number of people in Newton's Italian-American community.

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 there is no doubt the explorer was a brutalizer who ushered in the genocide of millions of indigenous people.

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.

The renaming was proposed by eight City Councilors including Emily Norton, Jake Auchincloss, Alicia Bowman, Becky Grossman, Bill Humphrey, Josh Krinzman, Brenda Noel and Ryan.

Councilors Allan Ciccone and Lenny Gentile voted against the measure.

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 said earlier. "We are going to have to do it at some point, we might as well do it sooner rather than later."

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

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