If you go What: Lafayette City Council When: 5:30 p.m., Tuesday Where: 1290 S. Public Rd. More info: cityoflafayette.com

When Boulder officials last month approved the proclamation of an Indigenous Peoples’ Day in Boulder, the decision was hailed by many throughout the county as an accomplishment long overdue.

Now, as both officials and residents to the east call for further recognition of diversity, Lafayette will eye a similar proclamation.

“The principle objective is for us to do two things,” Lafayette Mayor Pro Tem Gustavo Reyna said. “One is to honor the native people of this land who have contributed culture, history — thousands of years of contributions — to our existence.”

Secondly, he added, “we need to accept our responsibility and understanding that a lot of the oppressed people of this land did not get a chance to write history. We’re really righting a lot of wrongs by saying that we acknowledge, understand, and honor the people who existed here. They were not “discovered.” They were here, this is their land, this is something that we are occupying.”

According to the Boulder County Trends Report, less than 1 percent of the county population is made up of American Indian and Alaskan Natives.

Among the issues that have come to light in Lafayette in recent months is the lack of diversity in the city’s public services. With a population of roughly 27,000 — 18 percent of which is Latino — residents have grown increasingly concerned with a perceived lack of representation in its departments.

“Our metro area is home to about 110 native tribes,” Reyna said, “many of whom attend our public schools and many of whom actually serve on some of our committees.”

The Lafayette Police Department will bring five new officers into the fold this year — four of whom represent Latino and Middle Eastern backgrounds.

The move toward an Indigenous Peoples’ Day in Lafayette, which will be held on Oct. 12, came from early discussions on inequality through the Lafayette Peer Empowerment Project.

The project is part of a larger City of Lafayette initiative focused on crime prevention and positive youth development, which was developed by University of Colorado faculty with support from Angevine Middle School and Centaurus High School teachers and administrators.

“They came together to discuss the need to honor our Native Americans and essentially take responsibility for the real history,” Reyna said. “Schools and other places provide a relatively sanitized version of American history that’s just convenient and less troublesome. What the kids saw was that without learning the reality we continue to make the same mistakes.”

“When students were analyzing the issue they recognized that there were several sub-issues,” Elaina Verveer, program advisor for the Lafayette Youth Advisory Committee, said. “They are very aware of the existing barriers of oppression. Our goal now is to help unleash a collective consciousness.”

Recognizing that Boulder “has benefitted directly from Indian removal policies that violated human rights,” officials voted in early August to make Boulder the country’s 14th community to declare an annual Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

The day will be celebrated on the second Monday of October each year, on Columbus Day. An earlier version of the proposal instead had called for the holiday to be observed every Oct. 10. It will include a renaming of Settlers Park in west Boulder to something not yet decided.

State Rep. Joe Salazar, D-Thornton, authored a bill earlier this year seeking to replace the Columbus Day state holiday in Colorado with “Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” and last month told the council that the Boulder proposal would help “honor what has happened in this country.”

“It is important for us to really find places where we no longer have this tidy little history that is just convenient,” Reyna said. “We have these ugly realities and we should honor those who were oppressed and have become invisible.”

Anthony Hahn: 303-473-1422, hahna@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/_anthonyhahn