Outrage as Kamala Harris reaffirms her support to rename Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples’ Day

WASHINGTON, DC: Vice President Kamala Harris has reportedly doubled down on her stance about renaming Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

The issue resurfaced this year, and it wasn't long before critics — including former president Donald Trump's campaign — jumped in to accuse her of trying to “cancel American traditions.”

“This Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” Harris, 59, posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, October 14. “I am thinking about the young Indigenous leaders I met in Arizona last week. I am counting on their leadership and looking forward to our partnership.”

Kamala Harris' stance on Columbus Day

Kamala Harris has been relatively clear about her position on the matter for years. Back in her failed 2020 presidential campaign, she advocated changing the name of Columbus Day to “Indigenous Peoples’ Day”.

During a 2019 campaign stop in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, she clarified her stance when a voter asked if she’d push for the change at a federal level.

“Count me in,” Harris responded at the time. “People did not want to deal and accept and, most importantly, admit that we are the scene of a crime when it comes to what we did with slavery and Jim Crow and institutionalized racism in this country, and we have to be honest about that," according to C-Span video. 

“If we are not honest, we are not going to deal with the vestiges of all of that harm, and we are not going to correct course, and we are not going to be true to our values and morals,” she added. “Similarly, when it comes to Indigenous Americans, the Indigenous people, there is a lot of work that we still have to do,” she concluded.

In October 2021, the Biden-Harris administration became the first administration to officially recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Harris took the stage at the National Congress of American Indians Conference and delivered a speech noting that Columbus’s arrival in the Americas was far from a fairy tale.

“Every October, the United States has recognized the voyage of the European explorers who first landed on the shores of the Americas,” she said then. “But that is not the whole story. That has never been the whole story.”

“Those explorers ushered in a wave of devastation for tribal nations — perpetrating violence, stealing land, and spreading disease,” Harris alleged. “We must not shy away from this shameful past. And we must shed light on it and do everything we can to address the impact of the past on native communities today.”

Donald Trump's campaign attacks Kamala Harris over name change

Not everyone is thrilled about Kamala Harris’ push for the name change and the Donald Trump campaign did not hold back in its criticism. In a recent press release, they accused the Democratic presidential nominee of having “exclusively celebrated Indigenous Peoples’ Day over Columbus Day each year she has been in the office.”

Meanwhile, the Trump campaign positioned itself as the defender of Columbus Day.

“Kamala Harris is your stereotypical leftist. Not only does she want to raise taxes and defund the police — she also wants to cancel American traditions like Columbus Day,” campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

“President Trump will make sure Christopher Columbus’ great legacy is honored and protect this holiday from radical leftists who want to erase our nation’s history like Kamala Harris,” she added.

Interestingly, not all Democrats are on the same page when it comes to Columbus Day. Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo — who is considering a run for mayor of New York City — marked the day by celebrating Italian-American heritage.

“A day that honors and celebrates Italian-American heritage and the many contributions of Italian-Americans to our country,” he posted on X.

Outrage as Kamala Harris backs renaming Columbus Day

Kamala Harris was widely slammed on social media after she doubled down on her support for renaming Columbus Day.

"Then what? Rename MLK Day and anything else they want to change?" one social media user asked on X.

"Proving once again that Kamala is a Marxist that hates our Americans," another user alleged.

"I thought we were to be 'unburdened by what has been,'" someone else quipped.

"I will never understand how anyone with any ability to reason can listen to the nonsense that she spews," one person offered.

"Kamala Harris plans to remake or remove all symbols of our nation’s founders because they were Anglo 'Colonists.' She will replace our symbols with something more 'woke,'" read one comment.

"It will be Columbus Day for me until I die. Kamala is a dictator. And a bad one at that," another person wrote.

Columbus’s story has some unexpected twists too. While he’s traditionally thought to be from Genoa, Italy, a recent study of his DNA suggests he might have been a Sephardic Jew from Spain who kept his background hidden to escape persecution from the Catholic authorities, the New York Post reported.

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