Why The CenterFJP Honors Indigenous Peoples’ Day 
By Katie Mullin and Mariah Humphries

October 14, 2024 is Indigenous Peoples’ Day and Katie Mullin, Director of Content and Community, and Mariah Humphries, Executive Director, share their perspectives on what this day means for them.

Katie:

When I looked at my calendar this week and noticed that Indigenous Peoples’ Day was coming up on October 14, I had the thought, “How has our nation continued to believe the lie that Columbus ‘discovered’ America?”

And then I reflected on being a young girl in school and learning the story about Christopher Columbus sailing the ocean blue to the shores of North America. Native Americans were bit players in the story I was told year after year about my country. I never stopped to consider that if there were people already there, Columbus could not have discovered it. And why were these people not considered citizens or worthy of safety and respect? 

Only as an adult was I taught about the Doctrine of Discovery—a religious justification for colonizing and taking land inhabited by those assumed to not be Christian. (If you are curious to learn more, check out the book, Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery.)

We are just as likely to believe collective lies today as we were then. Truth has never mattered more. Celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day is a small step toward affirming the truth about ourselves and our country. By observing IPD, we acknowledge that all human beings are born in the image of God and are deserving of respect and dignity. Our hope is that we won’t repeat the sins of the past by deciding that one whole people group is less than another.

If you want to learn more about history from an Indigenous perspective, I commend to you An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (ReVisioning History) by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. As Santayna famously said, ““Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I would rephrase it to say “truthfully remember” for those who take Jesus at his word that the “Truth will set you free.”

Mariah:

“Our country was conceived on a promise of equality and opportunity for all people — a promise that, despite the extraordinary progress we have made through the years, we have never fully lived up to. That is especially true when it comes to upholding the rights and dignity of the Indigenous people who were here long before colonization of the Americas began.” — A Proclamation on Indigenous Peoples’ Day

Indigenous Peoples’ Day is a day for many to learn a missing history, to realize just because we have been taught one way does not mean it was the best way, and to reckon with what has been done against the Indigenous of Turtle Island, in the name of Jesus.

For me, as a Native woman, it is also a day to feel pride in us as a collective People. There is the “resiliency” against atrocities that we’ve had to have throughout history, and so many of us are facing significant issues. We are also leaders, artists, scientists, lawyers, writers, professors, collegiate presidents, activists, politicians, teachers, doctors, nurses, engineers, and so on. We are protectors of the land and water (literal and figuratively speaking) because we believe in stewarding the land that our Creator placed us on.

We are Imago Dei, and our skin, our language, and our existence reflects the image of the Creator.

There is a Mvskoke saying, “Este Mvskokvlke Paksvnke, Mucv-Nettv, Pakse,” which when translated, means “Mvskoke People, Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow.” We hold both our past and our present — our ancestors brought us to today and we carry their words and stories with us. We have the same responsibility to take us into tomorrow.

It can be both a burden and an honor. Perhaps it is an honor to carry the burden?

This article was written on the ancestral lands of the Eastern Band of Cherokee, Chickasaw, Shawnee and Yuchi.