The Minneapolis American Indian Center’s Culture Language Arts Network held a community powwow Monday night to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day.
The event started at 5 p.m. with a grand entry where dancers performed traditional Indigenous dances. Vendors sold food and homemade crafts, and organizers from around the city held informational tables at the center.
Throughout the event, Indigenous songs played correlating with different categories like men’s fancy, women’s jingle and intertribal, according to Culture Language Arts Network Program Director Cheryl Secola.
This powwow was just one of the many events that took place Monday to celebrate the holiday.
Indigenous Peoples Day, also known as Columbus Day, started in 1992 in California. While it is not a national holiday, President Joe Biden declared Indigenous Peoples Day to be on Columbus Day in a 2021 White House proclamation.
The holiday celebrates and recognizes the resilience and diversity of Indigenous peoples, according to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.
Natalie Rademacher, Minneapolis American Indian Center spokesperson, said this holiday is important to explain the history of the land Americans live on.
“I think recognizing the land that we’re on and how Europeans got here and were able to live on this land is really important, and so having a day where Native people are honored is huge,” Rademacher said.
Second-year University of Minnesota student Ava Hartwell, who identifies as Oglala Lakota, said the confusion around Indigenous Peoples Day versus Columbus Day is understandable, but it shows the need for more education about Indigenous history.
“I think that’s a very valid reaction to people who are uninformed about Indigenous history, but then that’s a bigger problem about why are we not educating Americans about Indigenous history,” Hartwell said.
Hartwell said the lack of education about the holiday makes it hard to celebrate.
“Even myself, as someone who identifies as Indigenous, I don’t know the full history of Indigenous Peoples Day and that just shows how much of a failure our education system is and how whitewashed our system is that even our own people aren’t aware of our own history,” Hartwell said.
Monday’s celebration was the first time the Minneapolis American Indian Center held a powwow for the holiday, but it was not the only community celebration, Secola said. The University’s American Indian Student Cultural Center hosted two round dances, bringing the celebration closer to students.
Secola said the powwow was a great way to celebrate the holiday as a community and bring more attention to Indigenous culture.
“We celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day,” Secola said. “It’s a big celebration, a social gathering. It’s really important for us as Indigenous people to be recognized finally.”
