Indigenous peoples commemorate their centuries-long legacy of resilience through ceremonies, dances, and orations.

In 2021, former President Joe Biden formally commemorated Indigenous Peoples Day.

A burgeoning contingent of states and municipalities has likewise embraced the observance — effecting a shift away from a commemoration long anchored in the veneration of explorer Christopher Columbus toward one centred upon the peoples whose lives and cultures were irrevocably transformed by colonialism.

Herein lies an examination of the rationale behind the designation Indigenous Peoples Day, alongside an account of the manner in which it is observed.

Indigenous Peoples’ Day has, for decades, been observed in multifarious guises and under a panoply of appellations, serving both to commemorate the history and culture of Indigenous peoples and to acknowledge the enduring adversities they confront.

Biden had asserted in a statement that the day was intended to “honor America’s first inhabitants and the Tribal Nations that continue to thrive today.”

It is customarily observed on the second Monday of October, coinciding with Columbus Day—a federal holiday instituted in redress of discrimination against Italian Americans, commemorating Columbus's 1492 sighting of what would come to be known as the Americas.

In recent years, the day has been marked by protests directed against memorials to Columbus, in the service of environmental justice, in advocacy for the restitution of Indigenous lands, and in an effort to raise awareness concerning missing and murdered Indigenous women.

President Donald Trump has declared that he will not recognize Indigenous Peoples Day in conjunction with Columbus Day in October.

Notwithstanding its status as a non-federal holiday, a number of states, together with Washington, D.C., observe holidays commemorating Indigenous peoples, several of which fall on the second Monday in October.

Indigenous Peoples Day is customarily either conjoined with Columbus Day or supplants the federal holiday entirely.

A plethora of municipalities and school districts likewise observe Indigenous Peoples Day.

“For generations, federal policies systematically sought to assimilate and displace Native people and eradicate Native cultures,” Biden wrote in the Indigenous Peoples’ Day proclamation.

Today, we acknowledge the resilience and fortitude of Indigenous peoples, together with the incalculable beneficial influence they have exerted upon every facet of American society.

In a discrete proclamation issued in observance of Columbus Day, Biden extolled the contributions of Italian Americans to U.S. society, while simultaneously acknowledging the violence and affliction that Columbus and other explorers of that epoch visited upon the Americas.

On October 12, 1492, Columbus—an Italian—made landfall in what is present-day Bahamas, inaugurating a wave of European exploration across the Americas in pursuit of gold and other riches, not least human chattel for enslavement.

In the course of that pursuit, Indigenous populations were decimated.

“Today, we likewise reckon with the grievous history of wrongs and atrocities that multitudes of European explorers visited upon Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities,” Biden wrote.

“It is a testament to our greatness as a Nation that we do not endeavor to inter these shameful episodes of our past — that we confront them forthrightly, that we bring them into the light, and that we do all within our power to redress them.”