On Oct. 7, the Albuquerque City Council issued a historic proclamation recognizing the second Monday of October, in perpetuity, as Indigenous Peoples Day. While Albuquerque does not officially observe Columbus Day as the federal and state governments do, what is different now is that for the first time ever it officially recognizes Indigenous Peoples Day.
The city proclamation came just days before a planned mass march to abolish the racist Columbus Day holiday. The Red Nation, which spearheaded the initiative, worked with City Council President Rey Garduño to write, sponsor and introduce the proclamation.
While city proclamations do not establish city policy or enact law, and are sometimes viewed as ceremonial, this proclamation was nevertheless a clear victory for the 55,000 Native people who call Albuquerque home, as well as the tens of thousands living in surrounding reservations and Pueblos. The news electrified the entire region.
Five days after the proclamation, on Oct. 12, the people of Albuquerque charged into the streets to celebrate its first-ever officially recognized Indigenous Peoples Day, forever burying the Columbus Day holiday here in the process.
Over a thousand people took part, blowing away the expectations of many.
Feelings of pride and joy mixed with anger and determination as marchers, galvanized by the popular struggle to abolish the celebration of genocide, carried banners and placards demanding action to end racist border town violence against Natives by police and racist community members, the eviction of the extraction industries and corporate polluters from Native lands, and for the federal government to uphold treaty rights for all Natives, on and off-reservation, as a first step towards addressing the catastrophic health care, unemployment and housing situation confronted by Native people everywhere.
Editor and publisher of NMPolitics.net Heath Haussamen wrote in his coverage of the day that “the Oct. 12 IPD march/rally could signal the mass revival of a campaign to free American Indian movement (AIM) activist Leonard Peltier.”
Imprisoned for nearly 40 years, Peltier, who was framed for the murder of two FBI agents in 1975 at the height of the U.S. dirty war against the American Indian Movement and other national liberation struggles, was named grand marshal of the Albuquerque Indigenous Peoples Day by organizers.
Hundreds of protesters chanted “Clemency Now!” as they streamed past the Pete V. Domenici federal courthouse in Albuquerque. President Obama has the power to free Leonard Peltier by a grant of Executive Clemency.
The winning of Indigenous Peoples Day in Albuquerque, accompanied as it was by a large politically focused march Native people in alliance with working people of all backgrounds, revealed that a new and powerful urban-based Native movement may be on the horizon. Momentum from the Albuquerque events will be felt everywhere.
One day after Albuquerque’s historic march, Mayor Javier Gonzalez proclaimed Indigenous Peoples Day in New Mexico’s state capital, Santa Fe.
Sam Gardipe, 59-year-old co-founder of The Red Nation and member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, said of the action: “The new generation has come up and taken up the cause, and that makes me feel good. … We haven’t seen this kind of Native movement in 30 or 40 years. I’m hoping this is just the beginning and things will change for the better.”
See below for more photos from the march.
