In recent years, Columbus Day has become the object of considerable scorn on account of Christopher Columbus’s alleged racism and, more broadly, a belief that European contact with North America was a net negative—a terrible mistake for which Americans of European descent should feel guilt. Well-researched books and articles have vindicated Christopher Columbus and the expansion of Western civilization with which he is rightly associated.1 These vindications have been compelling and persuasive.2 Yet, even still, the tide of popular anti-Columbus sentiment seems irreversible. In place of Columbus Day, many locales throughout the United States now celebrate “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.” Indeed, Indigenous Peoples’ Day is listed beside Columbus Day on standard printed calendars and date books, even in the iPhone calendar app.

But what does indigenousness mean, and why do so many celebrate it? Merriam-Webster defines it as: “produced, growing, living, or occurring natively or naturally in a particular region or environment.” But the way the term is commonly used is not so clear, particularly in relation to so-called Native Americans. “Native” Americans, according to much contemporary scholarship and genealogy, migrated to North America from Asia.3 If they are indigenous to North America because they have been here for a long time, then couldn’t the erstwhile Europeans in North America, or at least their descendants, claim to be indigenous as well? Why would anyone claim that Americans of English or French ancestry, whose families have inhabited this continent for centuries, are anything other than indigenous to this land where they were born? Do European Americans, unlike their Asiatic, tribal American counterparts, remain indigenous to Europe for all eternity?

Indigenous Peoples’ Day is listed beside Columbus Day on standard printed calendars and date books, even in the iPhone calendar app. But what does indigenousness mean, and why do so many celebrate it?
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And how far does one’s indigenousness extend, exactly? Is a tribal American with ancestral lands in Nevada indigenous to all of what now comprises the United States? Or is he as nonindigenous to Miami (some 2,171 miles from Las Vegas) as someone newly arrived from the Mexico City (a mere 1,283 miles away)?

Although it’s debatable who exactly is indigenous, we can be quite certain who isn’t. The freshly arrived Japanese man who steps off the plane to start a new life in New York City is not indigenous. The Nigerian immigrant driving a cab in Los Angeles is not indigenous. Iranian and Cuban refugees seeking freedom on distant shores—definitely not indigenous. Those who, at this moment, are fleeing oppression in Hong Kong or religious totalitarianism in Afghanistan for liberal nations of the West are distinctly nonindigenous. These nonindigenous people—and their bold quests in search of a better life—definitely are worthy of celebration.

So is the nonindigenous man of another type: the explorer who goes where no one has ever gone. Captain Carsten Borchgrevink, for instance, ventured to Antarctica in 1899, learning that no humans are indigenous to the continent. Some seventy years later, Neil Armstrong discovered that no life (that we know of) is indigenous to the moon. “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” is a historical testament to the tremendous value of nonindigenousness—or, to put the point positively, of venturing into the great unknown. “To boldly go where no man has gone before” is a fictional testament to this virtue; its cultural ubiquity demonstrates its popular resonance. Many of those who have never considered the matter in abstract terms nonetheless grasp that nonindigenous people often deserve praise.

In contrast, indigenousness, to the extent that it can be defined at all, amounts to just staying put—remaining where you happened to be born. The website of the Unitarian Universalist Association, a vocal supporter of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, describes the holiday as an occasion to “respect and learn from indigenous peoples and support their struggles for social justice and religious freedom.”4 But actual justice and religious liberty were far from the hallmarks of tribal culture in North America. On the contrary, some tribes practiced ritual sacrifice to their gods, and universally, individuals were subjects of their tribe; true individual liberty, as we now understand it, was wholly unknown.5

But supporters of Indigenous Peoples’ Day generally don’t concern themselves with such details. Rather, they preach veneration for indigenous cultures because they are indigenous. This praise for that which is deemed indigenous, irrespective of merit, is irrational.

On some level, even the proponents of Indigenous Peoples’ Day understand this. For instance, they don’t call for illiteracy among contemporary American tribes, even though no North American tribe possessed a written language prior to European contact.6 Neither have I heard them defending slavery, though it was as “indigenous” to North America as the American tribes that practiced it for centuries.7 (The Dutch navigator Hendrickson, in 1616—three years before the putative start of the notorious Triangular Slave Trade, as highlighted by the deeply flawed 1619 Project—observed “Indians of the Shuylkill River country holding Indian slaves.”8)

The European-led introduction of written language, the Enlightenment morality that fomented the eradication of slavery in this land, and the freedom of religion that became so central to the founding of the United States represent the merits of particular nonindigenous ideas brought here and developed by nonindigenous people.

To applaud stagnation—to credit people merely for staying in the same place where they were born—makes no sense. Human progress is advanced by the exchange of novel ideas, practices, products, and technologies—not by doing things “the way it’s always been done.”

In perhaps the greatest irony, Indigenous Peoples’ Day besmirches the American tribes it purports to defend. Although their culture was undoubtedly underdeveloped in comparison to that of contemporaneous Europeans, the bold decision of early tribesmen to come to North America, likely in search of more robust food supplies, is a prime example of pathbreaking to improve one’s life.

And we should applaud that pathbreaking spirit. From the first tribal Americans who left well-known areas in Asia in search of something greater, to courageous North Korean immigrants seeking to escape repression and achieve their values, to men standing on the surface of the moon—all of these people broke boundaries, traveling far beyond the lands from which they were indigenous. And they deserve to be commended for it.

So, this October, let us celebrate these nonindigenous people and their maverick spirit. Let us rejoice in an Explorers’ Day, a holiday to celebrate not only the Armstrongs and Borchgrevinks, but also the countless unknowns who make harrowing journeys to new lands in search of a better life (not just the “brazen giant” mentioned in Emma Lazarus’s poem but also the “tempest-tost” masses).9

Indigenous Peoples’ Day, as it is now observed, celebrates the imagined virtue of staying where you are born, or, perhaps more accurately, it celebrates the virtue-signaling of European Americans expressing guilt for alleged past injustice. Explorers’ Day would celebrate the very real virtues of investigating the world, discovering new places and possibilities, and taking the bold steps necessary to improve human life. Now that’s a good reason for a long weekend in October!

Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebrates the imagined virtue of staying where you are born. Explorers’ Day would celebrate the very real virtues of investigating the world, discovering new places, and taking the bold steps needed to improve human life.
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1. See, for instance, Thomas A. Bowden, The Enemies of Christopher Columbus (Cresskill, NJ: Paper Tiger, 2007).

2. See Michael. S. Berliner, “Man’s Best Came with Columbus : Critics Glorify the Primitivism and Collectivism of the American Indian. In Fact, Life Was Nasty, Brutish and Short,” Los Angeles Times, December 30, 1991, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-12-30-me-847-story.html.

3. See Simon Worall, “When, How Did the First Americans Arrive? It’s Complicated,” National Geographic, June 9, 2018, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/when-and-how-did-the-first-americans-arrive--its-complicated-; “Native American Populations Descend from Three Key Migrations,” University College London, July 12, 2012, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2012/jul/native-american-populations-descend-three-key-migrations.

4. “Indigenous Peoples Day,” Unitarian Universalist Association, https://www.uua.org/racial-justice/dod/indigenous-day (accessed October 7, 2021).

5. See George Franklin Feldman, Cannibalism, Headhunting and Human Sacrifice in North America: A History Forgotten (Chambersburg, PA: Alan C. Hood & Co., 2008).

6. “North American Indian Languages,” Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/North-American-Indian-languages (accessed October 7, 2021).

7. “Native Americans and Slavery,” Encyclopedia.com, https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/native-americans-and-slavery (accessed October 7, 2021).

8. Almon Wheeler Lauber, Indian Slavery in Colonial Times within the Present Limits of the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1913), 28–29, https://archive.org/details/indianslaveryinc54laubuoft/page/28/mode/2up.

9. Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus,” November 2, 1883, https://www.nps.gov/stli/learn/historyculture/colossus.htm.

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