Pittsburgh: Please Replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People's Day

For over 80 years, the U.S. has celebrated Christopher Columbus with a federal holiday in his name. But Columbus did not "discover" America: he pillaged it and brutalized and enslaved its people. It is time to stop honoring him.

Cities like Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, and Santa Cruz, CA have ended Columbus Day and replaced it with Indigenous Peoples' Day. I live in Pittsburgh and hope to see the city I love do the same. Please sign this petition to ask Pittsburgh to officially replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day.

Columbus' letters, and those of the men who accompanied him, reveal horrific brutality to the Native people. Columbus started the transatlantic slave trade and cut off the hands of any Native over the age of 14 who didn't bring him enough gold.

Columbus routinely gave his lieutenants women to rape as a “reward." He humiliated women in other ways, too: a Native woman who verbally insulted Columbus was made to ride on a mule around the town naked, and then her tongue was cut off. Women who gave birth were so malnourished and unable to produce milk, they often drowned their babies out of desperation.

These are just a few accounts of the horrors the Native Americans endured at the hands of Columbus. It is well past time we stop honoring him.

Please sign to ask Pittsburgh to acknowledge these injustices by creating Indigenous People's Day!