Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2025
Indigenous Peoples’ Day honors the culture and history of Native people past, present, and future.
I will be meeting them at the at the Gichigamiin Indigenous Nations Museum to celebrate the diversity and vibrancy of Indigenous cultures with FREE admission to the museum all day.
Afterwards, I will be meeting with Indigenous Americans at a private party at my vacation home in the north suburbs of Chicago with U.S. military veterans (former military officers and enlisted) who served honorably and proudly for the country that we are the original Americas.
Served proudly for the country who did not give our ancestors U.S. citizenship of our own land until June 2, 1924, with the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act, also known as the Snyder Act. This day may be the most important day for U.S. military soldiers who have served and currently serving our country because we have an administration in the White House trying to remove recognition of immigrant culture and indigenous culture who served their country from all Federal facilities.
Our rights to vote in U.S. elections on our own land was then secured decades later through federal legislation, court challenges, and amendments to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Even after federal laws were passed, individual states created their own barriers to prevent Indigenous Americans from exercising their right to vote...including making it a requirement to show "additional identification" that other Americans were not required to show.
Fortunately, most have their own private celebrations with others in their homes and cultural centers in the same communities the U.S. Federal buildings sits in. Simply, we refuse to be silenced by our own country on our own land.
The below photograph are Indigenous American Veterans who served in our wars and military conflicts since Vietnam (e.g. Grenada, Panama, Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan) are patriots of their land and country even though their ancestors who also served in the U.S. Armed Forces within a country who did not consider them to be citizens of their own country while knowing they are the original indigenous population of the Americas (a.k.a. The United States of America).
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Key moments in securing Indigenous voting rights:
Indian Citizenship Act of 1924: Also known as the Snyder Act, this law granted U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States, effectively giving them the right to vote in federal elections. However, many states, which controlled voter registration, continued to find ways to bar Native Americans from voting. 1948 State Supreme Court Rulings: Landmark court decisions in Arizona and New Mexico removed some of the most significant state-level barriers. The Arizona Supreme Court overturned a 1928 ruling that had deemed Native Americans living on reservations "under guardianship" and therefore ineligible to vote. That same year, a federal panel in New Mexico struck down a state constitutional provision that disenfranchised "Indians not taxed". Voting Rights Act of 1965: This act provided a stronger federal framework to combat racial discrimination in voting. While it was a major step, it did not fully address the unique challenges faced by Native Americans, such as geographic isolation and language barriers. Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1975: These amendments expanded the protections of the 1965 act to include "language minorities," which encompasses Native Americans. The changes required jurisdictions with large numbers of non-English-speaking. Despite these legislative and legal victories, many Native Americans still face challenges in exercising their voting rights today, including:
- Long distances to registration sites and polling places.
- The use of non-traditional addresses on reservations, which can make voter registration difficult.
- Lack of reliable mail service.
- Voter ID laws that do not recognize tribal identification to reside on sacred land now known today as "reservations".
Many American indigenous tribes...protest the celebration of Christopher Columbus (an Italian who commanded a ship for Spain) not only because he was not an American but more so because of the brutal colonization and violence that followed Columbus's arrival. For Indigenous people, the holiday represents a celebration of the enslavement, theft, loss of land and life that we have endured, rather than a "discovery" of an already inhabited continent.
To add further insult to the original residence of Americas, the United States created boarding schools to rob indigenous people of their heritage by removing children from their families by imprisoning them in "boarding schools" that were designed to severe family bonds, remove their heritage, change their indigenous names to English names, remove their language by forbidding their language to be spoken at school...
Essentially boarding schools was a deliberate tool of cultural genocide used to forcibly assimilate children into Euro-American society. The systematic abuse, family separation, and erasure of Native identity inflicted deep and lasting trauma that continues to affect Indigenous communities today.
Therefore, trying to force Indigenous Americans to celebrate Columbus Day is ethically unacceptable and an attempt to further erase the Indigenous culture instead of respecting the original inhabitants of the Americas. Furthermore, Indigenous People's Day is a reminder to the United States about the heritage of the Indigenous People that our voice will no longer be silenced nor erased.
As a reminder, Columbus holiday perpetuates the myth of Columbus as a hero and the first European to reach the Americas, ignoring the fact that Indigenous peoples have lived here in the Americas for thousands of years before the arrival of Christopher Columbus who was not an American.
States that replaced Columbus Day
- Maine, New Mexico, and Vermont: These states have replaced the Columbus Day holiday with Indigenous Peoples' Day.
- District of Columbia: Also replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day.
- Illinois, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island: These states celebrate both holidays with paid time off.
- Alabama: Recognizes "American Indian Heritage Day".
- South Dakota: Renamed the holiday to "Native American Day" in 1990.
- Alaska, California, Hawaii, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Wisconsin: These states honor Indigenous people with either a paid or unpaid holiday.
- Texas: Observes Indigenous Peoples' Week.
First European Explorers were the Norse Vikings to land in what is now Canada, around the year 1000 CE, establishing a settlement at l'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland.
After their brief presence, Europeans returned centuries later with John Cabot in 1497, who is considered the first to map the Atlantic coast for England. Following Cabot, French explorers like Jacques Cartier arrived in 1534, consolidating France's claim and exploring the St. Lawrence River, leading to the establishment of New France.
France does not have any holidays to celebrate their first inhabitants or settlers because there are too many groups of people with multiple origins.
Once again, I am in Chicago for Indigenous People's Day to celebrate my father's heritage as a Lakota Sioux as many others who are also U.S. military veterans...today on Monday October 13th 2025.
Day of Celebration: October 13th, 2025
Time: 10:00 am – 5:00 pm CDT
Location: Gichigamiin Indigenous Nations Museum 3001 Central Street, Evanston, IL, United States
https://chicagoaicc.com/events/indigenous-peoples-day-2025/
https://chicagoaicc.com/
"Know the truth about your history & heritage...it will prevent others from trying to silence or erase you"