Monday, October 12, 2020 - Indigenous Peoples Day.
To date, at least nine cities, towns, and counties in New York State have adopted Indigenous Peoples Day in place of Columbus Day. These locales include:
Akron/Newstead –––– Ithaca ––––– Lewiston ––––– Rhinebeck –––– Rochester ––––
Southampton’s school board ––––– Tompkins County ––––– Triangle –––– and Woodstock.
For now, New York City has yet to do the same; or has yet to adopt a formal stance embracing the celebration of both. In an already contentious year –––– socially, politically, economically and otherwise –––– debates surrounding the importance of naming federal and state holidays have recently been given more attention and light.
As recently as this past June, amidst nationwide as well as local demands to remove statues of Confederate Civil War generals and leaders who defended segregation and slavery, Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio expressed a desire for Columbus Circle to retain its name, along with a desire for the circle’s seventy-six foot monument of the the Italian explorer to remain.
However, in the Autumn of 2017, Mayor de Blasio did appoint a commission to look into it, by arranging a “ninety-day review of all symbols of hate on city property.” In January of 2018, the commissions’ findings gave the Christopher Columbus statue the green light; however, there would be two caveats:
(1) “De Blasio also added a curveball to the Columbus decision – decreeing that the city will commission a new monument to recognize the contributions of Indigenous peoples,” and
(2) “[B]owing to public outrage about how Columbus treated Native Americans, the mayor ordered the creation of new historical markers around the statue ‘explaining the history of Columbus.’”*
While de Blasio may or may not still be receiving the cold shoulder from the Columbus Citizens Foundation for the commissions’ caveats from January of 2018; about a month later, Southamptons, New York’s school board moved away from its temporary three year solution: “No School” day.
This year, the Indigenous Peoples Day two-day celebration on Randall’s Island has been cancelled due to Covid-19. It would have been the sixth annual.
Even so, the prevalence and history of the Indigenous People who occupied New York, New York long before the settlers from the Netherlands and England arrived cannot be overlooked. The island is called Manhattan, which by almost all accounts, is a word of the Lenape people, the city’s original inhabitants. A few more historical notes on the Indigenous Peoples who have called these lands home, well before the Duke of York arrived, below.
*CBS2 Exclusive: “Columbus Statue Will Stay In Place, But With Caveats” - January 11, 2018.
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One of a Native American people living near the Ottawa River in Canada, 1620s, from French Algonquin, perhaps a contraction of Algoumequin, from Micmac algoomeaking "at the place of spearing fish and eels." But Bright suggests Maliseet (Algonquian) elægomogwik "they are our relatives or allies."
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The area near Canarsie was originally settled by the Canarse Native Americans. The community's name is adapted from a Lenape word meaning "fenced area."
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“The neigborhood and its eponymous canal are thought to be named after a long-passed resident and Native American chief, the Canarsee sachem Gouwane. The late leader’s name is often translated as “sleep” or “the sleeper.”
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The name Manhattan derives from the Munsee Lenape language term manaháhtaan (where manah- means "gather", -aht- means "bow", and -aan is an abstract element used to form verb stems). The Lenape word has been translated as "the place where we get bows" or "place for gathering the (wood to make) bows."
According to a Munsee tradition recorded in the 19th century, the island was named so for a grove of hickory trees at the lower end that was considered ideal for the making of bows. It was first recorded in writing as Manna-hata, in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, an officer on Henry Hudson's yacht Halve Maen (Half Moon).
A 1610 map depicts the name as Manna-hata, twice, on both the west and east sides of the Mauritius River (later named the Hudson River). Alternative folk etymologies include "island of many hills",[46] "the island where we all became intoxicated" and simply "island", as well as a phrase descriptive of the whirlpool at Hell Gate.
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The name "Rockaway" may have meant "place of sands" in the Munsee language of the Native American Lenape who occupied this area at the time of European contact in the early 17th century. Other spellings include Requarkie, and Rechouwakie.
