Lara Medina is an associate professor of Chicano and Chicana studies with an interest in politics and religion at California State University, Northridge. She wrote Las Hermanas: Chicana/Latina Religious-Political Activism in the U.S. Catholic Church.

John García is a research professor at the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan. His research interests are minority group politics, especially Latinos; political behavior; political mobilization; urban politics; social survey research; and public policy-health. He wrote Latino Politics in America: Community, Culture and Interests.

View a 2012 photo-essay of Dia de los Muertos in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Read an Oct. 19, 2011 article about the U.S. appropriation of the Mexican holiday, Dia de los Muertos.

In Oklahoma a bill was introduced in 2005 that would have replaced Columbus Day with Native American Day. The bill did not receive a committee hearing.

Read an article from The Jamestown Sun about South Dakota’s Indigenous Peoples’ Holiday that stands in place of the Columbus Day holiday.

Joe Baca was a U.S. Representative in, D-Calif. He sponsored House Resolution 76 to establish a legal holiday recognizing Native Americans’ contributions.

Read “non-observance” for an idea of which states have opposed celebration of Christopher Columbus and why the holiday has become increasingly unpopular.

In response to Berkeley’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day in place of Columbus day, Yale raised awareness of the holiday’s brutal origin and history in 2009.