The Bloomington City Council voted Wednesday night in an 8-0 vote to declare every second Monday of October as Indigenous Peoples’ Day in Bloomington.
Mayor John Hamilton proclaimed Oct. 8, 2018, as Indigenous Peoples Day, but Resolution 19-17 officially puts the holiday on the city calendar every year.
The second Monday of October is recognized as Columbus Day in some places in the United States. Before the resolution passed, the city didn’t celebrate Columbus Day anyway, said council member Isabel Piedmont-Smith. She and council members Allison Chopra and Dorothy Granger sponsored the resolution.
“It doesn’t make sense to me to celebrate the conquering of peoples, a whole nation,” Granger said.
Caleb King is an IU senior studying neuroscience and the founder and president of the IU Native American Student Association. He is Supgpiaq and is part of the Alaskan indigenous Seldovia Village Tribe.
King said his Native heritage has always been a large part of his identity. He moved to Indiana for his sophomore year of high school. He said living in Indiana has been difficult because his identity isn’t as acknowledged here.
“I tell someone I’m Native, and they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s cool. Like Pocahontas, right?’” King said. “And then they move on, and it glosses over how important it is to me.”
At the meeting Wednesday night, King quoted a line from the city’s website: “Whether you come for school, business, pleasure or you would like to make Bloomington your home, you are welcome in Bloomington.”
Piedmont-Smith said the cultures that predated European settlers are often overlooked. She said this is especially true in Indiana.
“I mean, the state is called Indiana, land of the Indians, and yet we chased most of them out,” she said. “We really disrespected them as we started settling this country.”
Piedmont-Smith, who grew up in Bloomington, said part of the issue is Native American history isn’t always taught correctly or thoroughly enough in many schools. She said she learned about the removal of Native Americans from their land, such as the Trail of Tears, as progressing society.
“It was just kind of like, ‘Oh, there was this little road bump where all these people died, and they had to move to Oklahoma,’” she said. “There was no recognition that this was a terrible thing to do to people.”
Piedmont-Smith said she didn’t realize the extent of the atrocities until her freshman year of college when she read “A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn. In the first chapter of the book, Piedmont-Smith said she learned about the disease, enslavement and rape Christopher Columbus and European colonists imposed on Native people.
“I love my country, but we have some shameful parts of our history,” she said at the city council meeting.
Piedmont-Smith was a history teacher at Bloomington High School South during the fall semester of 1995. She said on Columbus Day, she made her students read the opening of Zinn’s book.
“I think that’s one of the reasons why I didn’t last long teaching,” she said with a laugh.
During King’s junior year of high school, he watched a video in history class of Native Americans doing a ceremonial dance to bring buffalo back after colonizers killed them off, knowing buffaloes were Native peoples’ main source of food.
King said he wanted to cry seeing the video because he recognized the importance of the ceremony, but his classmates laughed at it.
“To me, that was their last effort to ask the Creator to save them,” he said. “If that had been Jesus walking with a cross on his back, if that had been people in a church praying for food, no one would have laughed.”
King said if his classmates would have understood the culture more, they wouldn’t have found the video funny.
“I don’t blame them because the education system failed them,” he said.
Keisha Beyal is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation and a teacher in the Monroe County Community School Corporation. At the city council meeting, she said her school reviewed their social studies curriculum last year because certain aspects were lacking. Beyal said she thinks this resolution will have an influence on students.
“It will implicitly and explicitly affect them,” she said.
Multiple cities throughout the country, such as Seattle, Los Angeles, Denver, Phoenix and San Francisco, have renamed Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day, according to CNN. Berkeley, California, was the first city to adopt Indigenous Peoples Day in 1992. Entire states such as Minnesota, Alaska, Vermont, Oregon, Hawaii and South Dakota have renamed Columbus Day. Bloomington is the first city in Indiana to recognize Indigenous Peoples Day.
The resolution will help raise awareness that Native people still exist, King said. He also said it will help future Native IU students and Bloomington residents feel more acknowledged.
Agnes Woodward wore a black shirt that said “Phenomenally Indigenous” to the city council meeting. Woodward, who is part of the Kawacatoose First Nations band, said the resolution was meaningful to her.
“It means a lot as a mother, growing up not seeing history as we know it in our classrooms, in the media, not seeing our experiences in places where it really matters,” she said. “And for my children to have the opportunity to live in a city that acknowledges them and their history, it means a lot to me.”
At the meeting, Nicky Belle, director of the IU First Nations Educational and Cultural Center, said he was excited the resolution will be sent to other organizations, including IU, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce and the Monroe County Community School Corporation.
“Having these recommendations, particularly coming from the city, serves as a great, great opportunity to lead that way and to help show the colleges and universities and MCCSC schools how really important work this is,” he said.
Piedmont-Smith said the city will officially recognize the holiday publicly starting next year. Granger said she hopes the city will collaborate with the First Nations Educational and Cultural Center and the Native American Student Association in the future.
The First Nations Educational and Cultural Center will be celebrating Indigenous People’s Day on the evening of Oct. 14, according to the event's Facebook page.
“This resolution will mean a lot to all indigenous students who are here now, future generations that we will never see come here, as well as people who are not indigenous who will learn about the culture that still exists that they may not know is still here,” King said at the city council meeting.
