Indigenous Peoples’ Day

Today is Indigenous Peoples’ Day. While it is also known as Columbus Day, the reframing is more than a symbolic gesture and serves to recognize the crucial role the Indigenous Peoples’ had in the development of our nation. By acknowledging this, we honor the whole history of America, one that celebrates exploration and courage, while also acknowledging the civilizations that existed long before Columbus arrived and the consequences that followed after he did.

It is essential not to confuse bringing clarity with the erasure of history. The Americas were never empty lands waiting to be found. They were already home to tens of millions of people with thriving societies, complex governments, and remarkable achievements.

On this day, we remember the journeys these civilizations took, how different worlds eventually discovered one another, and how migration and exchange shaped the continents we know today.

The Great Migration: The First Americans

The story of the Americas begins tens of thousands of years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. During the last Ice Age, sea levels dropped enough to expose a land bridge called Beringia, connecting what is now Siberia and Alaska. Archaeological and genetic evidence show that groups of hunter-gatherers crossed this bridge in waves, following herds and adapting to new environments as they moved south.

For much of modern history, it was believed that the first people arrived about 13,000 years ago, spreading across the continent as the glaciers melted. However, recent discoveries have changed that understanding. Analysis of the Monte Verde site in Chile shows evidence of people roughly 18,500 years ago, and additional research from New Mexico and along the East Coast suggests that humans may have been here even earlier. There is evidence that the Americas were settled through multiple routes, both by land and sea.

These early peoples were not simply primitive wanderers, as often portrayed. They built sophisticated cultures with architecture, agriculture, and trade networks that rivaled those of ancient Europe and Asia. The Maya charted the stars and developed written language. The Inca engineered massive road systems through the Andes. The Mississippian culture built sprawling cities and monumental mounds in what is now the American Midwest. By the time Columbus sailed, an estimated 50 to 100 million people lived across the Americas, roughly the same number as in Europe in the 1400s.

Worlds Collide

For thousands of years, the civilizations of the Americas thrived in complete isolation from the rest of the world. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans served as natural barriers, and with abundant resources, there was no need for those societies to explore beyond them. As a result, knowledge of these continents never reached Europe, Africa, or Asia. And although there were a few fleeting points of contact, none were of significance to drive further contact.

Around the year 1000, Norse explorers from Greenland reached a place they called Vinland, most likely located in present-day Newfoundland. Archaeological remains at L’Anse aux Meadows confirm that Norse travelers built small settlements there, though they did not last. In Asia and the Middle East, scholars occasionally speculated about lands beyond the known world, but those were theories, not discoveries.

The 15th century brought a new kind of ambition. Advances in shipbuilding, navigation, and cartography enabled long ocean voyages. Portugal and Spain, eager to expand their trade routes, began exploring uncharted seas. When Columbus set sail in 1492, he hoped to find a faster path to Asia, which had previously been reached by land. Instead, he encountered areas unknown to Europeans and set in motion a chain of events that would forever link the two hemispheres.

What Columbus Actually Did

To be clear, Columbus did not discover a new world. Instead, he encountered one that was already established with robust cultures and innovation. What Columbus achieved was establishing lasting contact between two worlds that had evolved separately for millennia. That contact, known as the Columbian Exchange, reshaped nearly every aspect of global life.

Crops like corn, potatoes, and tomatoes traveled from the Americas to Europe, Africa, and Asia, changing diets and fueling population growth. In return, wheat, livestock, and sugarcane were brought to the New World. Along with these came disease. Smallpox, measles, and influenza spread rapidly through Indigenous populations, who had not built up any immunity. Within a century, it is estimated that as much as 90% of the native population had died from disease, war, and enslavement.

Columbus made four voyages across the Atlantic, never realizing he had found an entirely separate continent. His expeditions opened the door to colonization, the transatlantic slave trade, and centuries of displacement. He is remembered both as a symbol of exploration and as the beginning of one of the most tragic chapters in human history. The truth, as with most of history, lies in the tension between those two realities.

Inigenous Influence

Much of what we think of as American today has Indigenous roots. Many of the crops that sustain the modern world, such as corn, beans, potatoes, squash, cacao, and chili peppers, were first cultivated by Native peoples. Their agricultural systems were designed to sustain the land rather than exhaust its resources. Today, modern conservationists study those same principles as models for sustainability.

The influence of the Indigenous people extends beyond agriculture. The Iroquois Confederacy’s political system, which emphasized shared leadership and consensus, inspired many aspects of the United States Constitution. Benjamin Franklin and others admired how it balanced individual rights with collective decision-making.

Trade networks connected the continent long before Europeans arrived. Copper from the Great Lakes, shells from the Gulf Coast, and obsidian from the Rocky Mountains all moved along established routes. These were complex societies that engaged in diplomacy, commerce, and cultural exchange. Their legacy remains visible in the names of locations, languages used, and the very landscape itself.

Impact on the Modern World

The meeting of the Old and New Worlds did not just change continents; it changed civilization itself. Agriculture from the Americas transformed global diets. The potato fueled Europe’s population boom and industrial growth. Corn and cassava became staples across Africa and Asia. Coffee, sugar, and tobacco became global industries that shaped trade and economies for centuries.

Revolutions that began in the Americas, including those in the United States, Haiti, and South America, challenged monarchies and redefined ideas of liberty and self-governance. Those ideals were unevenly applied, but they inspired democratic movements around the world.

Scientific and medical knowledge also flourished. European explorers learned from Indigenous practices related to plants, navigation, and land management. Many modern medicines trace their origins to knowledge directly passed down through Native cultures.

Yet the legacy of colonization remains visible in ongoing disparities, including economic inequality, loss of land, and the erasure of native languages. Acknowledging that truth is not about guilt, it is about taking responsibility and learning from our past to do better in the future.

In Honor of the Indigenous Peoples

The shift from Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day is not an attempt to rewrite or minimize historical significance, but to acknowledge who laid the foundation for what made the United States a strong nation. For generations, history books told the story of exploration without acknowledging who was already here or what was lost. Recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ Day is a step toward seeing that fuller picture, one that celebrates achievement and courage while acknowledging the harm and consequences as well.

Indigenous Peoples’ Day also honors communities that endured centuries of displacement, forced assimilation, and cultural erasure, yet continue to preserve languages, traditions, and knowledge that benefit the world today. Honoring that resilience does not diminish the accomplishments of explorers. It simply expands the lens through which we understand our shared past.

Archaeologist David Meltzer once wrote, “The first Americans didn’t come to discover a new world. They came to make a home.” That same truth applies to nearly everyone who followed. Whether crossing an Ice Age land bridge, an ocean, or a modern border, people came to the Americas with hope for a better life.

Final Thoughts

History is rarely straightforward. It is a web of connections, each thread tied to another. The “discovery” of the Americas was not a single event. It was a long sequence of migrations, encounters, and exchanges that changed humanity forever.

Recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ Day invites us to see the whole picture by honoring both the courage of exploration and the endurance of those who were already here. It reminds us that the Americas were never waiting to be found. They were already alive, thriving, and evolving long before Columbus ever set sail.

As historian Charles Mann wrote in 1491, “Before Columbus, the Western Hemisphere was more populous and sophisticated than anyone had imagined.” That truth remains, and the Americas are still a place of resilience, innovation, and discovery. The difference is that what we discover today is not new land, but a deeper understanding of how the past continues to shape who we are and who we strive to become.