Every year, the federal holiday of Columbus Day brings significant tension in the United States. The day intended to honor Christopher Columbus, an Italian explorer who is often falsely credited with discovering the United States, has been met with resistance from Native Americans and others who say honoring Columbus disregards his true history of violence, terror, and enslavement.
“They’re just trying to showcase all the ‘good things’ that they have done, without trying to take accountability for all the bad that has also happened within the past 250 years,” said N’Kiyla Jasmine Thomas, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Oklahoma, of the conservative resurgence of celebrating Columbus.
Thomas, who has Black, Native American and white ancestry, told theGrio that recent actions taken by President Donald Trump to preserve the misrepresented history of Christopher Columbus—who never set foot on land that is present-day United States—are part of a larger goal of upholding white supremacist ideology and culture in the United States.
“It’s white supremacy,” said Thomas, who is a citizen of Oklahoma’s Chickasaw Nation.
Columbus first encountered the “New World” in 1492 in the Caribbean, specifically the present-day Bahamas, and later expanded to Hispaniola, now present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It set off an era of European colonization, enslavement, and violent rule by settlers throughout North America, South America, and the Caribbean islands. An estimated 90-95% of indigenous people in the U.S. were displaced, murdered, or died of diseases brought by Europeans.
On Wednesday, President Trump honored Christopher Columbus with a Columbus Day presidential proclamation, in which he described the historical figure as a “legend whose vision, fortitude, and perseverance unleashed a dynamic of history that led to the creation of the greatest, freest, and most just Nation in history.”
“We are forever indebted to his courageous voyage, and we will never allow his legacy to be erased by radical extremists,” reads the proclamation.
Trump hosted a Columbus Day celebration at the White House on Friday. Earlier this year, the president had a statue of Columbus erected on the White House grounds. It is a replica of a previous statue that was destroyed by Black Lives Matter protesters during the 2020 uprisings.
Despite Trump’s attempts to protect the misrepresented history of Christopher Columbus, Thomas, who would become the first Black and Native American from Oklahoma if elected on Nov. 3, says the federal holiday honoring the controversial Italian explorer doesn’t change the facts.
“It’s still Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” Thomas said of the holiday that was created to rebrand Columbus Day by putting the focus back on the histories of indigenous people and their cultures. It is celebrated in several states, cities, and localities.
“We always celebrate our Indigenous people on that day…if [Columbus] hadn’t come over here, then we wouldn’t have had half of the issues that we have now,” said Thomas, referring to land displacement, extreme poverty, and the loss of cultural rights and sovereignty.
However, the U.S. Senate candidate vowed, “We’re going to rise up just like we always have done. We’re going to rise up, and we have not been defeated yet.”
Calling out what she sees as a white supremacist agenda, Thomas told theGrio that white people “historically caused great harm to marginalized communities,” adding, “They try to play the superhero [and] they don’t want to be held accountable for the actions of their ancestors.” However, she acknowledged that there are also white allies and other communities of color who are coming together to push back against the whitewashing of indigenous history.
Speaking to the grievance that some white people may feel about confronting the true history of colonization in the U.S., Thomas said, “We just want them to be able to teach and be teachable, and not repeat history.” She said the recent actions by the Trump administration show that some “still want the reign of terror.”
That is why Thomas is calling on Black and Native American communities to come in solidarity against the shared harms of white supremacy.
“We’re not in a position to be fighting amongst each other. We have to be fighting the inequities, and we’re never going to get anywhere because that’s what they want us to do,” she told theGrio. She added, “I believe that if we all unified and we all came together, we would be the most unstoppable demographic in Oklahoma and in the nation as a whole.”
