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Maulian Bryant is the executive director of the alliance and a citizen of the Penobscot Nation.
One of the first things I worked on as the Penobscot Nation tribal ambassador was the bill to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day in Wabanaki homelands now called Maine. Former state Rep. Ben Collings sponsored this legislation and when it was signed into law in April 2019 it was the result of years of activism, education, and organizing by Wabanaki people and our supporters.
Making this change was a necessary step in the healing of the tribal state relationship marred by a lack of respect for Wabanaki self determination and the lasting oppressive legacy of the 1980 Maine Indian Land Claims Settlement and Implementing acts. While some see this as symbolic or just a name, we know that names, words, and symbols carry heaving meaning and affect how we treat one another.
Christopher Columbus did not discover North or South America because it already existed with people living here. People with complex and sophisticated societies and lifeways. Claiming he founded these places erases Indigenous people and the fact that we have been here for over 10,000 years, long before 1492.
Columbus also never set foot in the lands we call the United States of America. Where he landed in the Caribbean, he encountered the Indigenous people there, the Taino. He and his troops acted out horrific acts of terror on those people and documented these acts proudly in journals so we have a first hand account of them. Chopping of limbs for sport, feeding small children to dogs, gross violence of a sexual nature against Taino women — all things that are not only barbaric in the history of the world but they were so extreme he was put on trial for war crimes. This was no hero. This is no one to celebrate.
By having a holiday named after Columbus we not only erase the truth of history we glorify these atrocities as things to be revered and celebrated. Columbus displays some of the first documented thinking about genocidal methods used as a means to rid the land of a group of people so that others could take the land over as their own.
Celebrating Columbus Day, as President Donald Trump proclaimed last week, is embracing ethnic cleansing. It sends a message to tribal people that the destruction of our ancestors is something that Americans want to hold strong to. How do we explain that to our children? How do our elders feel seeing Columbus called a hero? I am glad that in our state we have made this change and we are not going back.
The Indigenous Peoples Day movement started as a grassroots effort to take this day from something harmful and painful and reclaim it. When I was growing up at Penobscot Nation we didn’t acknowledge the second Monday in October. We went to work and school and ignored the car sales or mattress liquidations that seemed to mark this day for the rest of the world. Before there was talk of renaming this day you would be hard pressed to find a majority of Americans celebrating it in any way having to actually do with their perception of Columbus.
Since we made the change in 2019, I have witnessed Wabanaki people taking part in this day with so much pride, healing, joy, and taking up space with our cultural identity and modern day causes front and center. Our people have survived dark traumas in our past because we are so connected to our ancestral ways and our connections to one another.
It is so refreshing and heartwarming to see our people take their place as the rightful Indigenous people of these lands and talk about the lasting contributions and stewardship that all Mainers should learn about.
Indigenous Peoples Day is about so much more than the name. It is about living our truth together and being better for it.
