*NEW* Native American Heritage Month Resources
About Indigenous Peoples’ Day
Indigenous Peoples' Day is a holiday in the United States that celebrates and honors Indigenous American peoples and commemorates their histories and cultures.
What is Indigenous Peoples’ Day
It is celebrated across the United States on the second Monday in October, and is an official city and state holiday in various localities. It began as a counter-celebration held on the same day as the U.S. federal holiday of Columbus Day, which honors Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. Some people do not observe Columbus Day at all, citing the lasting harm Indigenous tribes suffered because of Columbus's contributions to the European colonization of the Americas.
Indigenous Peoples Day was instituted in Berkeley, California, in 1992, to coincide with the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Columbus in the Americas on October 12, 1492. Two years later, Santa Cruz, California, instituted the holiday. Starting in 2014, many other cities and states adopted the holiday. In 2021, Joe Biden formally commemorated the holiday with a presidential proclamation, becoming the first U.S. president to do so, and presidential proclamations have also been issued in 2022 and 2023.
Explore key themes: Indigenous Peoples’ Day Historical Legacies, Shaping the Nation
Shining a light on the legacy of Indigenous People
10 Inspiring Indigenous People That Made History
1. Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte
In 1889, Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte graduated top of her class from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and became the first Native American to earn a medical degree. The following year, she returned home to her nation, the Omaha Tribe of Nebraska, where she became the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ (BIA) sole physician. La Flesche Picotte had always planned to return home; she pursued medicine out of concern for her fellow Umóⁿhoⁿs (Omahas). The settler invasion of Umóⁿhoⁿ lands in the 1850s and 1860s had led to outbreaks of infectious diseases like measles and tuberculosis. Believing that these Euro-American diseases required Euro-American knowledge to prevent and treat, La Flesche Picotte sought to utilize Western medicine to heal her community.
2. Susette La Flesche Tibbles
Susette La Flesche Tibbles, an Omaha woman, spent her entire life tirelessly campaigning for Native American rights as a speaker, activist, interpreter, and writer. La Flesche was born in Bellevue Nebraska in 1854, the oldest daughter of Joseph La Flesche. Her father, known as “Iron Eyes,” was the last recognized chief of the Omaha tribe. La Flesche began serving as an expert witness and interpreter in court cases in which Native Americans sued the U.S. Government. She was also a speaker, organizing speaking tours for others and herself in which they would speak out against injustice towards Native Americans. One East Coast tour that La Flesche organized for Standing Bear, Tibbles, her brother, and herself was quite successful. During the tour, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow entertained La Flesche and her co-speakers in his home.
3. Vine Deloria, Jr.
Vine Deloria Jr.’s life encapsulates many of the important issues that were besetting indigenous communities in the 20th century. For example, he was part of federal relocation in the 1950s and 60s, which forced people off the reservation to urban centers. He became the president of the National Congress of American Indians in 1964, and it was during his tenure as the director that membership in tribal nations skyrocketed. But he is best-known for writing a bestselling book called Custer Died for Your Sins (1969) that not only captured the anger of native peoples at the time, but also humanized native peoples for non-native audiences.
4. Ada Deer
Ada Deer—who recently passed away on Aug. 15 at the age of 88—was born on the Menominee Nation, and by the time she was in her early 20s, the nation no longer existed. It no longer was a sovereign nation with the government-to-government relationship with the United States. It had been federal Indian policy to terminate tribes, and they succeeded in a number of cases around the country. Deer was one of the native people who went to D.C. and got the tribe reinstated in 1973. After the tribe was restored, she became the first chairperson of the Menominee Nation. She lobbied until President Richard Nixon reversed the entire federal policy of termination in 1973.
5. LaDonna Brave Bull Allard
LaDonna Brave Bull Allard dedicated her life to the protection of the water. In 2016, she was the Tribal Historic Preservation Office officer for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and alerted people to the impending plans for construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. She was a founder of the Sacred Stone camp at Standing Rock, opening up her homelands for people to come and help to support the Standing Rock and oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline Project and protest corporate greed. People from all over the world came to North Dakota in support of that mission. It was one of the largest gatherings of indigenous people in decades, since the 1970s.
6. Attakullakulla
Attakullakulla was one of the most influential peace chiefs in the 18th century. He lived through very trying times for the Cherokees. There’s continued encroachment of European settlers into Cherokee lands, and difficulties maintaining levels of crop output to feed the population, and a number of smallpox epidemics that devastated Cherokee communities.
In 1730, he was one of seven Cherokee emissaries who was part of diplomatic efforts to secure a covenant of peace and friendship with the British. That agreement aimed to secure free trade between the Cherokees and the British in North America. His skilled diplomacy helped Cherokees adapt their cultural folkways while also providing access to coveted trade goods.
7. Roger Jourdain
Roger Jourdain became the first elected tribal chairman for Red Lake reservation in 1958, serving for 32 years. He had to overcome tremendous adversity; growing up, he was sent to residential boarding school in southern Minnesota and ran away twice.
White agents ran reservations from the middle of the 1800s until 1934, so most tribes had to go through a rebuilding process, and Roger Jordain was part of that. When he came into office, a lot of people were still living in wigwams. During his tenure as chairman at Red Lake, the life expectancy for residents increased by 20 years. He got phone service, electricity, and ambulance service to all of the houses on the reservation.
8. Rachel Caroline Eaton
In 1919, Rachel Caroline Eaton became the first known Native American woman to get a PhD, at a time when few women—let alone Native American women—had opportunities for graduate education. Eaton was a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, and she dedicated her life to researching and educating people about the history of her people. Along with her tireless efforts in activism and education, her first book, John Ross and The Cherokee Indians (1914), brought public attention to the Trail of Tears, the genocide and forced removal of her Nation from their land.
9. John Herrington
John Herrington, an enrolled Chickasaw citizen, became the first enrolled member of a Native American tribe to fly in space. He was selected for the program by NASA in 1996, one of 2,500 candidates to apply for just 35 astronaut positions. After training, Herrington was selected as a Mission Specialist for Endeavour, the sixteenth Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station. Endeavour launched from Kennedy Space Center on November 23, 2002. Herrington, born in the small town of Wetumka, Oklahoma, honored his Chickasaw heritage by taking the Chickasaw Nation flag and an eagle feather as a symbol of strength into space.
10. Charles Curtis
Charles Curtis was an American attorney and Republican politician from Kansas who served as the 31st vice president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 under Herbert Hoover and the Senate Majority Leader from 1924 to 1929. A member of the Kaw Nation born in the Kansas Territory, Curtis was the first Native American to serve in the United States Congress, where he served in the United States House of Representatives and Senate before becoming Senate Majority Leader. Curtis was the first Native and person of color to serve as Senate Majority Leader and Vice President.
Revere Public Schools, Human Rights Commission Celebrates Native American Heritage Month
On Thursday, Oct. 17, the Revere Human Rights Commission and students and staff from Revere Public Schools set out to gain a deeper appreciation for our local Native American history and culture by traveling to sacred indigenous lands in Plymouth that were home to the thriving Wampanoag tribe.
Led by Strong Oak Lefebvre, Executive Director and co-founder of the Visioning B.E.A.R. Circle Intertribal Coalition, Inc., the group first traveled to Plimoth Patuxet and later to the Tidmarsh Sanctuary.
The purpose of the visit was to understand the struggles the indigenous people have endured over the centuries of colonization while recognizing the strength, resilience, and survival of their cultures, histories, and communities.