Columbus Day 2019 – A few Facts you should know about it

Today is October 14,2019. So, what is so special about it? Well, if you are in the US, you should know better. It is Columbus Day today, a holiday commemorated in the United States as a federal holiday. It is in honour of Columbus and his entry into the Americas in 1492 and has been one of the prominent events on the US Holiday calendar.

When is Columbus Day? The day is celebrated on the second Monday of October every year. While it has been one of the major federal holidays in the US, it isn’t considered to be a major one as such. In fact, the day came to be celebrated as the Columbus Day in 1971. Before that, most of the states celebrated the Columbus Day on October 12.

The Columbus day is not without the hiccups. In fact, Columbus was NOT the first person to land on the Americas. In fact, he was not even the first European to do so. There were several indigenous people already living there. In fact, they had been living in the region centuries before the arrival of Columbus in the Americas.

That would perhaps explain why the Day has been replaced with the Indigenous People Day in several of the US states and cities. Some of these states include Minnesota, Alaska, Vermont and Oregon. There are a few cities as well that celebrate the day as the Indigenous People Day, a few of them include Seattle, Los Angeles, Denver, Phoenix, and San Francisco.

There have been pieces of evidence to prove the ill-treatment that Columbus meted out to the local dwellers in the Americas. His voyages were responsible for the spread of deadly diseases and enslavement of the locals. The day is celebrated as indigenous people’s day to respect the indigenous culture and honor them.

There are now more than 130 cities across 34 states, around 10 universities and eight states have chosen to celebrate the day as the Indigenous People’s Day instead of the federally declared Columbus day. They claim to have abandoned the Columbus Day as they think it in a way glorifies the colonisation of the region and ill-treatment of the native residents.