Good afternoon, folks. I was given today off from work, as today is a federally-recognized holiday. Currently, the federal government and most US states refer to it as “Columbus Day,” in honor of the Italian explorer and colonizer Christopher Columbus.

However, over the past few decades, there has been a growing movement among progressives and indigenous rights activists to rename the holiday “Indigenous Peoples Day.” Some local and state governments have taken the step of doing so. Meanwhile, some Italian-Americans - particularly older and more politically conservative ones - are very upset by the proposal, as they are invested in the image of Columbus as an Italian hero figure with (loose) ties to American history.

Now, I can’t speak to Italian-American heritage. My opinions are my own, and anyone of Italian descent is entitled to their opinion. I think in the long run that replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day is the right thing to do. With the exception of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, Columbus never saw or set foot in what is now The United States. Moreover, his legacy of discovery is completely overshadowed by his enslavement and eradication of the Taino people, among other indigenous Caribbean tribes. To top it all off, Columbus’s expedition was not even the first to discover what would become known as “The New World.”

Columbus is not someone we should look up to, and I certainly do not want my day off to be in the name of a genocidal slaver. More important is the way that Columbus’s actions set the tone for relations between native groups and white settlers. It was a tragic precedence, and would be seen time and again all over North and South America. The wounds remain fresh in the United States and Canada, where First Nations continue to struggle to get the federal governments of both to even honor existing treaties, let alone grant them restitution.

I will grant that simply naming a day in honor of indigenous people is not a solution to centuries of injustice. Nor should it be. However, it can be a starting point, a means of opening the door to talking about stuff that usually gets glossed over in the history books. More than just a day when the mail doesn’t get delivered, this should be a day of remembrance and reflection for white Americans as well as the diverse patchwork of tribes still living among us.

In this spirit of remembrance and reflection, I am going to put my money where my mouth is. Now, I’m very careful when it comes to giving to charity, as I am leery of the pervasive corporate social engineering through what us leftists call “the Non-Profit Industrial Complex.” However, I was able to find a few organizations that I consider on the up and up for the most part. I have made two charitable contributions of $100 each to The Native American Rights Fund, and The First Nations Development Institute.

The first provides much needed legal services to indigenous communities and individuals that otherwise would not be able to afford legal representation, as well as educating these communities on their rights under US and tribal law. The second focuses on empowering First Nations through technical assistance and training, policy advocacy, and direct financial grants with an aim toward developing local economies and strengthening community and cultural institutions.

I encourage everyone reading to research and give to a charity benefiting indigneous communities today, and moving forward. In addition to the two I listed above, here are a couple more that you may wish to look into:

Adopt-a-Native-Elder Program: This charity is more local in nature, and focuses on providing basic necessities to roughly 500 traditional Elders of the Navajo Nation. Many live in remote parts of the reservation along the Arizona-Utah border.

Native American Heritage Association: A regional charity that provides emergency food, clothing, medicine, and other life necessities to reservations in South Dakota and Wyoming. NAHA provides critical assistance to the Crow Creek and Pine Ridge Reservations, which includes the two most impoverished counties in the United States.

Finally, I have a short list of recommended books that the First Nations Development Initiative has recommended as a good starting point for understanding First Nations history in the US, if my readers are so inclined.

Bordewich, Fergus M. Killing The White Man’s Indian; The Reinvention of Native Americans at the End of the 20th Century. New York: Anchor; 1st Anchor Books Trade Pbk. Ed edition, 1997.

Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. New York: Owl Books, 2001.

Deloria, Vine. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969.

Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne and Dina Gilio-Whitaker. “All the Real Indians Died Off” and 20 Other Myths about Native Americans. Boston: Beacon Press, 2016.

Limerick, Patricia Nelson. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. New York: W. W. Norton, 1987.

Lyons, Oren. Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations & the U.S. Constitution. Santa Fe: Clear Light Books, 1992.

Prucha, Francis Paul. “Documents of United States Indian Policy.” Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000.