To the Editor:

At Princeton Council’s meeting on 8 October, some of us asked that Council adopt an Indigenous Peoples Day to replace the traditional Columbus Day. We are grateful that our words fell on very receptive ears, and we particularly thank Mayor Lempert for her open embrace of the idea of declaring an Indigenous Peoples Day in Princeton. We also thank the mayor for asking Letitia Fraga, the Princeton Council liaison to the Civil Rights Commission, to initiate such discussions with the Commission, and we hope that the CRC will recommend such a declaration, with Princeton Council action to follow.

Princeton would then join with other states and municipalities in the national movement to rename Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day — a movement which gains new force month by month as more people recognize the grave and systematic injustices done against the natives who were here for centuries before us — and the richness of their cultures, past and present, that they nurture despite hard odds. Fifty-five (55) states and smaller governments have swelled the movement — among them Vermont, Minnesota, South Dakota, Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Bangor, Tulsa, Denver, Ithaca, Asheville, Cambridge, and Harper’s Ferry. Please find a complete list (as of October 2017) at http://time.com/4968067/indigenous-peoples-day-columbus-day-cities.

Just last month, as Somerville Mass. adopted Indigenous Peoples Day, the Italian-American mayor wrote that  “Columbus Day is a relic of an outdated and oversimplified version of history,” (CNN headline, 10/8/18). Indeed, one of us explicitly asked for more truth-telling in school education — about the realities of white American treatment of indigenous peoples initiated by Columbus: enslavement, broken treaties, brainwashing, forced removals, and genocide. Manifest Destiny began long before President Monroe’s proclamation of 1823.

A further truth is that, nationwide, the indigenous peoples don’t exist in a “past tense” that erases them.  They are here, throughout all the states. New Jersey alone is home to a cohesive group of some 34,000 Lenni Lenape, on whose ancestral lands Princeton was established, without a treaty. Indigenous peoples know more about environmental stewardship than many immigrants: it is to everyone’s benefit not only to celebrate them but to learn from them.

We sincerely hope that Princeton will act to acknowledge historical truth and present native efforts to revive and flourish against the odds. We hope that future action by Princeton Council to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day in 2019 and beyond will be one of many significant steps in our continuing efforts to heal wounds of the past by building mutual respect, trust, inclusion, and equitable justice for all in our community. We will surely applaud again if Princeton Council does indeed join Princeton’s citizens with the progressive and important movement to tell history accurately and to honor the First Peoples of this land.

Daniel A. Harris
Dodds Lane

Patricia Soll
Linden Lane

Roberto Schiraldi
Delemere Drive