NAYA Celebrates First Graduating Class

The Native American Youth and Family Center celebrates their first graduating class with a breakfast with elders. This year, Portland Public Schools will celebrate Native Americans with Indigenous People's Day on the same day as Columbus Day.

(Stephanie Yao Long/The Oregonian)

This year, in addition to celebrating the Italian explorer who crossed the Atlantic in 1492, students in Portland Public Schools will honor the indigenous people who lived in the Americas long before “Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”

The Portland School Board this week unanimously voted to recognize the second Monday in October as Indigenous People’s Day, following the lead of public bodies across the nation that have taken action to honor Native Americans in tandem with or instead of the explorer.

Portland School Board member Greg Belisle, who sponsored the resolution, called it “a small way to say to indigenous students that we recognize your strengths, your validity, and your worth.”

Portland’s declaration came on the same day that city officials in Seattle renounced the Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous People’s Day, and a day before the Seattle School Board followed suit. Cities governments across the nation have taken similar action, and several state governments including Oregon’s have opted not to recognize Columbus Day.

In Seattle, the city council’s decision to create the new holiday sparked a battle with Italian activists who said the explorer’s heritage is linked with their own.

Belisle said Portland Public Schools’ new Indigenous People’s Day isn’t meant to replace Columbus Day, but to supplement it.

“It’s not about one or the other, it’s about how do we get a complete picture to understand where we’re at in history, and how we got there?” he said.

The longstanding holiday has been scrutinized in recent years both for its focus on Columbus’ discovery of a continent that was already inhabited by indigenous people and because of the false notion that Columbus landed in America. In reality, historians say, his 1492 voyage took him to the islands now known as the Bahamas.

The school board resolution to create the holiday notes that “Portland was built upon homelands and villages of the Indigenous Peoples of this region,” and that systematic racism has since contributed to high rates of poverty, poor health and lower-levels of educational attainment.

The resolution also urges district staff to include more lessons about indigenous people’s history and culture in their classrooms. During discussion about the resolution, board member Steve Buel urged his fellow board members to take direct action to ensure that happens.

“I’d love to see something that would really affect the kids in the long run,” Buel said.

Belisle, for his part, said he hopes the resolution will force the Portland and Multnomah County local government leaders to follow suit.

These are not significant investments you have to make, but they sure send a clear message of a different way of interacting with folks who have not been well-represented in the past,” Belisle said.

--Kelly House