Dr. Malinda Maynor Lowery, Cahoon Professor of American History, was recently quoted in a CNN article about Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The piece discusses the roots of the holiday in the Red Power Movement of the 1960s, along with the meanings of the holiday for Native Americans today. The CNN journalist, Harmeet Kaur, draws on information from a 2020 article that Lowery penned in The Conversation, titled “Why more places are abandoning Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous Peoples Day.” Read an excerpt from the CNN piece below along with the full article: “What Indigenous Peoples’ Day means to Native Americans.”

The narrative around Columbus Day helped uphold “the new racial order that would emerge in the US in the 20th century, one in which the descendants of diverse ethnic European immigrants became ‘White’ Americans,” historian Malinda Maynor Lowery wrote in a 2019 article for The Conversation.

Eventually, Native Americans began to challenge the history behind it.

Inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, Native American activists in the late 1960s formed the Red Power Movement, built on principles of self-determination and cultural pride. At a 1977 United Nations conference in Geneva, Indigenous delegates from around the world resolved “to observe October 12, the day of so-called ‘discovery’ of America, as an International Day of Solidarity with the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.”