All but one Moscow City Council member voted in favor of a request to recognize Indigenous People’s Day.
The sole dissenting vote in the six-person council was cast by councilor Jim Boland. He finds the new name as non-inclusive, feels it uses an inappropriate definition of indigenous and believes unfair focus was given to Christopher Columbus’ violence, Boland said.
“The name change to Indigenous People’s Day singles out one particular race of people to honor,” Boland said in a group email to city officials and members of the Moscow Human Rights Commission (MHRC), one week prior to the council’s Oct. 2 vote.
Moscow is now the first Idaho city to make such a recognition, though Columbus Day was never officially recognized at the city level. Two of Idaho’s public universities, the University of Idaho and Boise State University, already recognize Indigenous People’s Day.
“Caucasians who immigrated to North America due to persecution and famine are left out,” Boland said further in the email. “Asians who came here for the same reasons are excluded. Negroes who were brought here in chains are excluded.”
When asked about his word choice in the emails, Boland said, “There’s no reason other than that’s the name of specific races. There’s Caucasians, then there’s negroes and there’s Asians.”
The MHRC, who requested the city council recognize Indigenous People’s Day, consulted with Nez Perce tribal members, the Washington State
University Tribal Liaison Office and Yolanda Bisbee, the University of Idaho Director of Tribal Relations, on the name, MHRC Chair Ken Faunce said in an email. He said the commission had no inclusivity concerns regarding the name, as all the tribal peoples they consulted with said they were okay with the name.
A growing number of cities and towns across the country have recognized the day in lieu of Columbus Day on the second Monday of October, including Los Angeles, California and Austin, Texas, according to USA Today. August 9th is International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, as declared by the United Nations, according to TIME.
Faunce felt the city’s decision to recognize the day, which does not change city operations, is a symbol that both honors native peoples and recognizes the atrocities committed against them.
“You can’t change the past but maybe you can accept it and move past it,” Faunce said. “To me, that is inclusive because it’s a symbol — even if you don’t mention every group in America.”
A change of the holiday’s name was not out of the question for Boland, but he said he would have preferred a name that did not specifically list any one group, such as Discovery Day or Discover America Day.
He said he hoped the day might be declared to encourage people to discover a new place near them.
“When you recognize one particular ethnic group you are taking something away from an individual … Anytime that, as a people, we discriminate against or for any particular ethnic group, that’s kind of the dictionary definition of racism.”
Those two names, and one unspecified name, were included in a request for the MHRC as part Moscow mayor Bill Lambert’s efforts. He worked with Boland and councilor Kathryn Bonzo, Faunce said, to come up with possible names. The mayor first wrote to the MHRC, asking them to consider another name that was “more unique,” Faunce said.
The commission denied the request because they felt all the proposed names had problems and that Native American’s are the region’s Indigenous People.
“We felt that having a bunch of white people sit around and decide what to call the day is kind of defeating the whole purpose of what we’re doing,” Faunce said.
Boland expressed concern on the definition of indigenous used, having said the request used a “twist” on its meaning to make it what Faunce defined as “the first human inhabitants of an area,” or their descendants.
“If that’s the case, then Caucasian people are indigenous to the moon … Homo sapiens evolved in Africa — everyone else is an immigrant,” Boland said. “All the rest of the world is populated by immigration.”
Faunce differed on the term’s interpretation.
“I think it was really a misunderstanding of what indigenous means … A million years we came from the same place. That’s not quite the same thing,” Faunce said.
Another concern for Boland with the proposal was that the debate was centered around Columbus’ wrong-doings. Though he said he doesn’t support Columbus, he said he thought the criticism of him is unfair.
“The whole thing was framed around Christopher Columbus … and barbaric behaviors and slavery that he supposedly represents,” Boland said. “But you can’t find any ethnic group that hasn’t engaged in those things over the last 500 years … Yeah he probably did those things but he didn’t differ that much from the people he was oppressing.”
While he understands the acceptance of violence have changed since, he said he thinks it is unfair to judge the past by contemporary standards. Faunce said Columbus’ violence was considered horrible, even relative to his time, and that even others who were violent had him removed from office.
The MHCR may petition the state and federal governments for change as well, as per the request, Faunce said.
Kyle Pfannenstiel can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @pfannyyy