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.

Read an article about how Berkeley changed the Columbus Day holiday into Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 1992, after the city declared Columbus not a hero. 

Montana, in addition to Columbus Day, celebrates American Indian Heritage Day on the fourth Friday of September. Read a column published Sept. 23, 2005, by the Billings Gazette.

Jonathan Batkin directs the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe, N.M. He has been published widely on Pueblo Indian pottery and the Native American curio trade, including From the Railroad to Route 66: The Native American Curio Trade in New Mexico (Wheelwright Museum of the Amer, 2008).

Joe Shirley Jr. of Chinle, Ariz., is president of the Navajo Nation, which includes portions of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Contact George Hardeen.

Kathleen S. Fine-Dare is professor of anthropology and gender/women’s studies at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo., and has expertise on Native North America. She wrote Grave Injustice: The American Indian Repatriation Movement and NAGPRA (University of Nebraska Press, 2002).

Ward Churchill, who is Creek and Cherokee, was a professor of ethnic studies and coordinator of American Indian studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is a leader in the American Indian Movement of Colorado. His numerous books include, as author, Speaking Truth in the Teeth of Power: Lectures on Globalization, Colonialism and Native […]

Gregory Cajete, a member of the Santa Clara Pueblo, directs Native American studies at the University of New Mexico.