Let’s get something straight right off the top: Donald Trump cannot “reinstate” Columbus Day because it never left. And honestly, I can’t believe that we’re talking about this in April 2025. I haven’t even taken off my rabbit ears from Easter yet.
Columbus Day is still a federal holiday under U.S. law. It’s listed right there in 5 U.S.C. § 6103 alongside Christmas and Thanksgiving. Biden never canceled it. Nobody replaced it. Indigenous Peoples’ Day was added alongside it, not instead of it.
“I’m bringing Columbus Day back from the ashes. The Democrats did everything possible to destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation, and all of the Italians that love him so much. They tore down his Statues, and put up nothing but ‘WOKE,’ or even worse, nothing at all! Well, you’ll be happy to know, Christopher is going to make a major comeback. I am hereby reinstating Columbus Day under the same rules, dates, and locations, as it has had for all of the many decades before!”
But that did not stop Trump from getting on Truth Social this week, claiming he is “bringing Columbus Day back from the ashes.” And because America loves a good lie more than it loves the truth, a lot of people are buying it.
As an Indigenous woman, I am mad as hell about it. This is not just political theater. It is a reminder of how disposable Indigenous people still are in this country, even in 2025.
Columbus Day Never Went Anywhere
To be clear, Columbus Day still happens every second Monday of October. People celebrate it and bank close, schools throw up decorations and white people love it as much as pumpkin spice lattes. Nothing about it has changed.
Biden issued a Columbus Day proclamation in 2024, just like Trump did during his time in office. There was no cancellation, no federal erasure and no woke conspiracy plotting in secret to make Italian people feel bad.
What Biden did was recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day in a second, separate proclamation. For the first time, a president spoke the truth: that Indigenous people existed before Columbus stumbled into the Caribbean thinking he had reached India.
Recognizing Indigenous people does not erase Columbus Day. More importantly, telling the truth has always made the powerful uncomfortable.
What Columbus Really Did
The truth is, Columbus did not “discover” anything and I can’t believe how many times we’ve had to explain this. We were all taught this in school and songs about “in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue” and it was cute and adorable but that was both indoctrination and miseducation to promote white exceptionalism. America likes to do this a lot.
He showed up to a land already filled with people, cultures, civilizations, languages and histories. Instead of respecting what he found, he enslaved, murdered and exploited Native communities for gold, power and status. Columbus’s own crew wrote about the atrocities he ordered.
His legacy is not heroism. It is horror.
For example, he cut off the hands of Indigenous people who failed to meet impossible gold quotas. He sold nine-year-old Indigenous girls into slavery. He organized mass killings to keep control through fear. When Trump says he wants to “bring Columbus back,” what he really means is, “I want to protect the lies that make America feel good about itself.”
The truth is, white exceptionalism, nationalism and patriotism are not the same thing. Patriotism means loving your country enough to tell the truth about it. Nationalism demands blind loyalty even when it causes harm. White exceptionalism insists that the worst parts of history do not matter because they built something that only white people are allowed to claim. Because of this, when Trump talks about “bringing Columbus back,” he is not celebrating exploration or courage. He is celebrating the myths that protect a narrow and violent version of America, the one where Indigenous people are treated like a footnote to someone else’s glory.
Trump Columbus day reinstatement threatens the fight for basic rights
Meanwhile, Indigenous people in the United States fought just to be recognized as human.
- We could not freely practice our religions until Congress passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act in 1978
- We could not vote in all 50 states until the late 1960s
- Our children were forced into government-run boarding schools until the 1970s
- Our ancestors’ remains were dug up and displayed in museums until Congress finally stepped in with repatriation laws during the 1990s
As a result, Indigenous communities lost generations of culture, language and ceremony. We are not talking about ancient history or 1492. We are talking about the lifetime of our parents and grandparents.
Because of this, when people lose their minds over Indigenous Peoples’ Day, they are not protecting history. They are protecting their comfort. They do not want to face the truth about how recently and how systematically Indigenous rights were violated. The same thing happens every year when Juneteenth gets recognized. People call it divisive because they cannot stand the mirror it holds up. Slavery did not end in ancient times. It ended inside living memory. The truth is, it is easier for them to gaslight the survivors than it is to admit the crimes ever happened.
Trump’s Culture War Has Always Been About Erasing Indigenous Truth
Trump’s rant is not about honoring history. It is about silencing Indigenous voices and fueling the kind of cultural erasure that always walks hand in hand with fascism. By stirring up unnecessary outrage over statues and holiday names, he distracts people from what really happened and turns history into a weapon for political control.
He can spin the idea that Indigenous recognition somehow threatens American identity, when all it really threatens is the lie that conquest was noble. Respecting Indigenous people does not erase Italian American heritage. It simply adds the parts of the story that have been buried for centuries.
And let’s be real: If your pride depends on the erasure of another people, it was never real pride to begin with.
Why This Matters Right Now
It would be easy to roll our eyes and dismiss this as another Trump stunt. It would be easy to ignore it because Columbus Day still legally exists. But every time this narrative goes unchallenged, it gets louder. These narratives have real consequences.
Because of this, Indigenous communities continue to face erasure, not just symbolically, but materially.
- Thousands of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women still wait for justice.
- Pipelines still cut across sacred lands without consent.
- School curriculums still pretend that Native history ended in the 1800s.
- Reservation communities are still forced to fight for access to clean water.
- Native languages are still disappearing because of generations of forced assimilation.
If we do not push back now, the lie becomes the story all over again.
We Are Still Here
We do not need Trump’s permission to exist. We do not need his blessing to honor our ancestors because we survived Columbus.
As an Indigenous community, we survived forced removals, broken treaties, assimilation, boarding schools and mass graves.
We will survive Trump’s tantrums too.
We are still here.
We are still raising our children.
We are still speaking our languages.
We are still fighting.
We are not going anywhere.
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