WEBVTT - BrainStuff Classics: Why Are Some Americans Cancelling Columbus Day?

0:00:01.890 --> 0:00:07.910
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to BrainStuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, BrainStuff. Lauren

0:00:07.930 --> 0:00:11.390
<v Speaker 1>Vogelbaum here with a classic episode of the podcast for you.

0:00:12.310 --> 0:00:15.250
<v Speaker 1>In this one, we get into the history of Columbus Day,

0:00:15.270 --> 0:00:18.970
<v Speaker 1>a national holiday here in the United States, including why

0:00:19.050 --> 0:00:24.430
<v Speaker 1>some Americans now celebrate a relatively new holiday, Indigenous Peoples Day, instead.

0:00:25.510 --> 0:00:30.350
<v Speaker 1>As of October of 2026, 17 states, Washington, D.C., And

0:00:30.470 --> 0:00:34.850
<v Speaker 1>over 200 other municipalities have officially made the switch. There's

0:00:34.890 --> 0:00:38.250
<v Speaker 1>a bill in Congress to recognize it nationally. I'll let

0:00:38.409 --> 0:00:40.070
<v Speaker 1>prior Lauren get into why.

0:00:40.090 --> 0:00:46.459
<v Speaker 2>Hey BrainStuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here. For more than 500 years

0:00:46.540 --> 0:00:49.880
<v Speaker 2>after stepping ashore on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, Christopher

0:00:49.900 --> 0:00:52.780
<v Speaker 2>Columbus is a divisive figure here in this so-called new

0:00:52.840 --> 0:00:56.910
<v Speaker 2>world he opened to European explorers and colonists. On the

0:00:56.930 --> 0:01:00.140
<v Speaker 2>second Monday in October, as many Americans celebrate Columbus Day

0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:02.280
<v Speaker 2>with a fall cookout or big sales at the mall,

0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:05.720
<v Speaker 2>others will observe Indigenous Peoples Day, a holiday born of

0:01:05.770 --> 0:01:10.390
<v Speaker 2>protest against a conflicting historical icon. Columbus was once revered

0:01:10.450 --> 0:01:13.780
<v Speaker 2>as the brave navigator from Genoa, Italy, who defied critics

0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:17.000
<v Speaker 2>to seek out a Western passage to India. Sure, he

0:01:17.060 --> 0:01:20.310
<v Speaker 2>miscalculated the distance from Spain to India by nearly 8,000

0:01:20.310 --> 0:01:24.630
<v Speaker 2>nautical miles, that's around 14,000 kilometers, but he stumbled onto

0:01:24.690 --> 0:01:27.709
<v Speaker 2>two continents largely unknown to the Europeans in the process.

0:01:28.430 --> 0:01:31.830
<v Speaker 2>And no, Columbus never actually stepped foot in North America,

0:01:32.150 --> 0:01:35.130
<v Speaker 2>but many European Americans still saw him as the nation's

0:01:35.170 --> 0:01:39.830
<v Speaker 2>de facto discoverer. But then a new image of Columbus

0:01:39.890 --> 0:01:42.890
<v Speaker 2>began to emerge. From his journals, we learn that when

0:01:42.930 --> 0:01:45.710
<v Speaker 2>Columbus first met the indigenous Taino people of the Caribbean

0:01:45.810 --> 0:01:48.570
<v Speaker 2>islands and noted that they were peaceful and didn't have

0:01:48.610 --> 0:01:52.080
<v Speaker 2>advanced weapons technology, his first thought was to enslave them.

0:01:52.860 --> 0:01:56.140
<v Speaker 2>Columbus wrote, they would make good servants. With 50 men,

0:01:56.180 --> 0:01:58.080
<v Speaker 2>they can all be subjugated and made to do what

0:01:58.140 --> 0:02:02.200
<v Speaker 2>is required of them. Indeed, on Columbus's second voyage to

0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:06.460
<v Speaker 2>the Americas, he rounded up 1,500 native Arawak men, women,

0:02:06.560 --> 0:02:08.820
<v Speaker 2>and children, and held them in pens while his ships

0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:12.060
<v Speaker 2>prepared to sail back to Spain. He chose 500 to

0:02:12.100 --> 0:02:15.280
<v Speaker 2>be taken to Europe and sold into slavery. 200 of

0:02:15.320 --> 0:02:18.260
<v Speaker 2>them died on the journey. And those who remained in

0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:21.579
<v Speaker 2>their homeland? Through a combination of forced labor in Spanish

0:02:21.620 --> 0:02:25.340
<v Speaker 2>colonies and European diseases like smallpox, the native populations of

0:02:25.380 --> 0:02:28.680
<v Speaker 2>the Bahamas and Hispaniola were virtually wiped out within decades

0:02:28.720 --> 0:02:33.910
<v Speaker 2>of Columbus's arrival. By low estimates, there were 100,000 Arawak

0:02:33.990 --> 0:02:40.310
<v Speaker 2>on Hispaniola in 1492. By 1514, only 32,000 remained, and

0:02:40.330 --> 0:02:44.290
<v Speaker 2>by 1542, there were only 200. Some historians claim that

0:02:44.350 --> 0:02:46.940
<v Speaker 2>up to 3 million Taino died in that same time period.

0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:52.480
<v Speaker 2>We spoke with Kerry Gibson, historian and author of Empire's Crossroads,

0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:55.160
<v Speaker 2>A History of the Caribbean from Columbus to the Present Day.

0:02:56.080 --> 0:02:58.780
<v Speaker 2>She said Columbus didn't come over in the spirit of

0:02:58.820 --> 0:03:03.160
<v Speaker 2>scientific inquiry and cultural sensitivity. First, he was mistaken in

0:03:03.210 --> 0:03:06.410
<v Speaker 2>his navigation. Second, he was looking for gold and for

0:03:06.510 --> 0:03:09.830
<v Speaker 2>people to enslave. When you realize that it's very hard

0:03:09.870 --> 0:03:12.220
<v Speaker 2>to still hold him up as a positive symbol. It

0:03:12.260 --> 0:03:13.940
<v Speaker 2>makes a lot of sense that some people are pushing

0:03:13.980 --> 0:03:18.670
<v Speaker 2>back against Columbus Day. The movement to replace Columbus Day

0:03:18.710 --> 0:03:21.870
<v Speaker 2>with Indigenous Peoples Day started back in 1977 at a

0:03:21.910 --> 0:03:26.950
<v Speaker 2>United Nations International Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations. Instead

0:03:26.970 --> 0:03:30.180
<v Speaker 2>of celebrating Columbus's arrival as the foundation of the Americas,

0:03:30.620 --> 0:03:34.000
<v Speaker 2>participants proposed an alternative holiday that would recognize that Native

0:03:34.040 --> 0:03:38.760
<v Speaker 2>peoples had inhabited these lands for millennia. South Dakota ditched

0:03:38.820 --> 0:03:42.340
<v Speaker 2>Columbus Day for Native Americans Day in 1990, and Berkeley,

0:03:42.360 --> 0:03:45.080
<v Speaker 2>California became the first place to switch to Indigenous Peoples

0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:49.250
<v Speaker 2>Day in 1992. Since then, more cities and states have

0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:52.510
<v Speaker 2>distanced themselves from Columbus and embraced a new holiday that,

0:03:52.910 --> 0:03:57.190
<v Speaker 2>in the words of Maine's proclamation, celebrates, quote, the historic, cultural,

0:03:57.310 --> 0:04:00.530
<v Speaker 2>and contemporary significance of the indigenous peoples of the lands

0:04:00.810 --> 0:04:05.880
<v Speaker 2>that later became known as the Americas. The anti-Columbus Day

0:04:05.920 --> 0:04:09.220
<v Speaker 2>movement has its detractors, though. Some believe it's a case

0:04:09.260 --> 0:04:12.740
<v Speaker 2>of political correctness run wild, while others allege that repealing

0:04:12.780 --> 0:04:16.470
<v Speaker 2>Columbus Day would be an affront to another ethnic group, Italian-Americans.

0:04:17.650 --> 0:04:21.790
<v Speaker 2>The National Italian American Foundation, or NIAF, wrote in a statement,

0:04:22.350 --> 0:04:25.849
<v Speaker 2>When Columbus Day was founded in 1937, the federal holiday

0:04:25.890 --> 0:04:28.490
<v Speaker 2>provided a sense of dignity and self-worth in light of

0:04:28.510 --> 0:04:32.130
<v Speaker 2>the hostility and discrimination that many Italian immigrants, Italian Americans,

0:04:32.300 --> 0:04:37.219
<v Speaker 2>and Catholics more broadly, faced. An estimated 4 million Italian

0:04:37.279 --> 0:04:41.659
<v Speaker 2>immigrants came to America between 1880 and 1920, mostly farmers

0:04:41.740 --> 0:04:45.710
<v Speaker 2>fleeing desperate poverty in their home countries. Italian immigrants faced

0:04:45.790 --> 0:04:50.029
<v Speaker 2>terrible discrimination and outright violence, and early Italian-American civic groups

0:04:50.190 --> 0:04:53.190
<v Speaker 2>latched onto the Genovese Columbus as a symbol of pride,

0:04:53.270 --> 0:04:57.739
<v Speaker 2>connecting Italians to the broader American experience. The first Columbus

0:04:57.779 --> 0:05:01.920
<v Speaker 2>Day celebration was in 1792, to commemorate the 300th anniversary

0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:06.260
<v Speaker 2>of Columbus's first voyage to America. In San Francisco, Italian

0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:11.520
<v Speaker 2>communities started celebrating an annual Columbus Day as early as 1869. Then,

0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:15.200
<v Speaker 2>in 1891, the Italian immigrant community in New Orleans was

0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:18.190
<v Speaker 2>the victim of the largest mass lynching in U.S. history.

0:05:18.730 --> 0:05:23.470
<v Speaker 2>Eleven people were killed. Following this, in 1892, President Benjamin

0:05:23.510 --> 0:05:26.930
<v Speaker 2>Harrison called for a general holiday, the 400th anniversary of

0:05:26.970 --> 0:05:31.650
<v Speaker 2>Columbus's landing, and proclaimed Columbus a pioneer of progress and enlightenment.

0:05:33.150 --> 0:05:35.969
<v Speaker 2>At the urging of the Knights of Columbus, President Franklin D.

0:05:36.010 --> 0:05:39.940
<v Speaker 2>Roosevelt made Columbus Day an official federal holiday in 1937,

0:05:39.940 --> 0:05:41.880
<v Speaker 2>and the holiday has since become a day when many

0:05:41.940 --> 0:05:45.859
<v Speaker 2>Italian Americans celebrate their heritage through community festivals and parades.

0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:49.000
<v Speaker 2>Given the painful history that led to the founding of

0:05:49.040 --> 0:05:51.790
<v Speaker 2>Columbus Day, groups like the NIAF are some of the

0:05:51.830 --> 0:05:54.770
<v Speaker 2>staunchest opponents of state and national efforts to erase it

0:05:54.830 --> 0:05:59.409
<v Speaker 2>from the calendar. The NIAF wrote, we believe that to

0:05:59.450 --> 0:06:02.330
<v Speaker 2>repeal Columbus Day as a federal holiday, which is celebrated

0:06:02.380 --> 0:06:05.339
<v Speaker 2>by over 20 million Italian Americans, only to replace it

0:06:05.380 --> 0:06:08.479
<v Speaker 2>by another holiday celebrated by another ethnic group, would be

0:06:08.580 --> 0:06:12.450
<v Speaker 2>culturally insensitive. The group says it does not oppose Indigenous

0:06:12.470 --> 0:06:14.630
<v Speaker 2>Peoples Day as long as it's held on another day

0:06:14.750 --> 0:06:19.750
<v Speaker 2>beside Columbus Day. Gibson, the historian, doesn't have an easy

0:06:19.880 --> 0:06:23.710
<v Speaker 2>answer for solving the Columbus Day controversy, but encourages deeper

0:06:23.750 --> 0:06:26.630
<v Speaker 2>reflection on the long and complicated history of the lands

0:06:26.670 --> 0:06:30.530
<v Speaker 2>and people that we call American. She said, The minute

0:06:30.570 --> 0:06:34.849
<v Speaker 2>Columbus arrived in Hispaniola, everything changed. We're still having discussions

0:06:34.890 --> 0:06:37.330
<v Speaker 2>about how it changed, and historians are still dealing with

0:06:37.350 --> 0:06:46.260
<v Speaker 2>the legacy of that initial encounter. Today's episode is based

0:06:46.300 --> 0:06:48.800
<v Speaker 2>on the article The Messy Legacy of the Columbus Day

0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:53.090
<v Speaker 2>Holiday on HowStuffWorks.com, written by Dave Ruse. BrainStuff is a

0:06:53.110 --> 0:06:56.570
<v Speaker 2>production of iHeart Podcasts in partnership with HowStuffWorks.com and is

0:06:56.630 --> 0:07:00.390
<v Speaker 2>produced by Tyler Klang. For more shows from iHeart Podcasts,

0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:04.380
<v Speaker 2>visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

0:07:04.440 --> 0:07:05.340
<v Speaker 2>to your favorite shows.