In 2021, President Joe Biden formally commemorated Indigenous Peoples’ Day with a presidential proclamation, becoming the first U.S. president to do so. That year, he proclaimed to observe the second Monday in October as a day to honor Native Americans, their “resilience and strength” and determination to preserve “land, language, spirit, knowledge, and tradition,” even as they have faced a “centuries-long campaign of violence, displacement, assimilation, and terror,” he said.

The move shifted focus from Columbus Day, the federal holiday celebrating Christopher Columbus, which shares the same date as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. (The Columbus Day proclamation Biden signed in 2021 invited reflection on “America’s spirit of exploration” and “the courage and contributions of Italian Americans throughout the generations” who have risked “poverty, starvation, and death in pursuit of a better life.”)

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