O'Farrell was principal sponsor of legislation the council passed last year designating the second Monday of October as Indigenous Peoples Day in place of Columbus Day in the nation's second-largest city. As with the old holiday, government offices, courts, banks and many businesses were closed. The inaugural observance was to be capped with an outdoor concert headlined by the Grammy-winning group Black Eyed Peas and the Native American rock band Redbone. Dr Leslie Jimenez, Hopi Nation member and descendent of Mexican and Ethiopian indigenous peoples, wears traditional celebratory face paint, used to connect to ancestors, during an Indigenous Peoples Day blessing in Seattle on Monday. Credit:AP Loading Los Angeles, whose earliest settlers belonged to the Gabrielino-Tongva peoples, is home to the largest indigenous population of any American city, according to the UCLA American Indian Studies Centre.

A growing number of US cities since the 1990s have replaced Columbus Day with a holiday honouring indigenous people. Others include San Francisco; Denver; Seattle; Minneapolis; Anchorage, Alaska; Phoenix; Portland, Oregon; and Albuquerque, New Mexico. A handful of states, from South Dakota and Hawaii to Vermont and Minnesota, have done likewise. Critics of Columbus Day, proclaimed a national holiday in the 1930s, say it has perpetuated a false historical narrative surrounding Christopher Columbus, the Italian-born explorer credited with "discovering America" when the first of his four trans-Atlantic voyages for the Spanish crown landed on an inhabited island of the Bahamas in 1492. Native Americans and First Nations people join in on a drum circle during an Indigenous Peoples Day blessing and rally before a march in Seattle. Credit:AP While Columbus was long hailed for bringing European civilisation and settlement to the New World, present-day scholars acknowledge a far more complicated legacy including enslavement and subjugation of the indigenous inhabitants he encountered.

"Columbus' landfall ushered in one of the greatest injustices in human history: the wholesale transfer of wealth and lands from native peoples to Europeans," Steven Hackel, a University of California, Riverside history professor, said in a column published last year by the Los Angeles Times. A performer prepares to celebrate the inaugural Indigenous Peoples Day in LA. Credit:EPA Chief Red Blood Anthony Morales of the Gabrielino-Tongva of San Gabriel said the new holiday corrects an epic myth. "It's something that has been instilled in us since in school that in 1492 Columbus was this great guy who was an explorer and adventurer that was going to be a good person to us. But as we get older we learnt otherwise," he said at Monday's ceremony. "The truth is out, and this is why it is so historical and meaningful for me." Reuters