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Why Trump wants to bring the Columbus Day “back out of the ashes”: NPR

A car with an Italian flag can be seen at the annual Columbus Day Parade in New York City in 2023.

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images North America


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Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images North America

The Columbus Day is currently one of 11 public holidays recognized by the federal government. But President Trump says he brings back to the “New World” in 1492.

In a social post from Sunday truth, Trump said that he wants Christopher Columbus to celebrate a “big comeback” in the United States.

“I hereby use the Columbus Day according to the same rules, data and locations as it did in all the many decades before!” Trump wrote.

However, the Columbus Day has been an official federal vacation for almost a century, with many government employees free the day every year.

Many people are now celebrating the day of indigenous people. Trump's predecessor Joe Biden was the first US president to recognize the day of indigenous people as a national compliance on the same date as Columbus Day and recognized the articles of the country's American people.

Some Italian American groups praised Trump's weekend message, with one describing them as “deeply symbolic”.

Here is what you should know about the ongoing cultural collision between the two holidays.

How Columbus Day fell out of favor

The first official celebration of Columbus' trip through the Atlantic occurred in 1892, during a time of the widespread anti-Italian mood in the United States, 11 Sicilian immigrants in New Orleans were lynched in New Orleans in response to the murder of the city's murder.

The Columbus Day became an official federal holiday in 1934 during the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Since 1970 it has taken place every year on the second Monday in October.

But in the last half century, the legacy of the historical figure, which landed on the Bahamas in 1492, was clouded. He was condemned for this

Shannon Speed, a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and Director of the UCLA Indian Indian Studies Center, told NPR in 2019 that much more was now known about what the Renaissance Decker and his party did after landing. It included “looting, raped and generally a genocide that were already here,” said Speed. “We don't want to celebrate that. Nobody wants to celebrate that.”

The column settings towards Columbus have caused some city and state governments to change the name of the vacation or not to recognize it at all. A review of 2023 from the Pew Research Center showed that only 16 countries and the US territory of the American Samoa recognized the second Monday in October as the official holiday called Columbus Day.

The changing mood – especially according to the protests of racial justice of 2020 – also triggered some jurisdiction to remove statues of the discoverer, including Ohio and New Jersey. One of the Washington Post and with analysis in 2021 showed that at least 40 monuments have been mined to Columbus since 2018. The post reported more than 130 such monuments.

What is the day of indigenous people?

The idea of ​​the day of the indigenous peoples was proposed in 1977 by participants in the United Nations International Conference on the discrimination against indigenous population groups in America.

“It can be a day of reflection in our history in the United States, the role that indigenous people have played in the effects that history had on indigenous people and communities, and also a day to achieve a certain understanding of the diversity of the indigenous peoples,” said Mandy van Heubiberen, who then told the coordinator of the cultural interpreter in the Smithsonian National Museum of American Indian of the American Indian, to Nepprpremer.

In his proclamation of 2021, President Biden said that he had recognized the “important victims of the indigenous people of this country – and their many ongoing contributions to our nation”. (Biden has also published proclamations that marked the Columbus Day, last last year.)

Trump and others weigh

In his post on Sunday, Trump accused Democrats of “doing everything to destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation and all Italians who love him so much.” He added: “They tore off his statues and set nothing but 'woken up' or worse, nothing at all!”

Several Italian American groups cheered Trump's comments.

The religious sons and daughters of Italy in America said in a Facebook post that it was “deeply grateful” and that the recognition “for the Italian American community was deeply symbolic”.

“The Columbus Day is of particular importance for the Italian Americans, since it is not only our history, but also the resistance of our community in view of the discriminated anti-Italian American discrimination,” said the group.

Robert Allegrini, President and CEO of the National Italian American Foundation, welcomed what he Trump's “commitment to the preservation and improvement of the celebration of Columbus Day” in one position on X.

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