Trump rules out recognising Indigenous Peoples Day alongside Columbus Day

US President Donald Trump made clear on Sunday that he would not follow his predecessor's practice of recognising Indigenous Peoples Day alongside Columbus Day in October, accusing Democrats of denigrating the explorer's legacy as he pressed his campaign to restore what he argues are traditional American icons.

Democrat Joe Biden was the first president to mark Indigenous Peoples Day, issuing a proclamation in 2021 that celebrated "the invaluable contributions and resilience of Indigenous peoples" and recognise "their inherent sovereignty".

The proclamation noted that America "was conceived on a promise of equality and opportunity for all people" but that promise "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 colonisation of the Americas began." 

  Trump on Sunday used a social media post to declare, "I'm bringing Columbus Day back from the ashes."  He said on his Truth Social site that "the Democrats did everything possible to destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation, and all of the Italians that love him so much".

The federal holiday, the second Monday in October, was still known as Columbus Day during Biden's term but also as Indigenous Peoples Day. That's been a longtime goal of activists who wanted to shift the focus from commemorating Columbus' navigation to the Americas to his and his successors' exploitation of the indigenous people he encountered there.

Though Trump has long objected to telling the country's history through a lens of diversity and oppression, the holiday he seeks to restore to its primacy was added to the calendar as a nod to the country's growing diversity.

Columbus' expeditions never touched the North American continent, let alone any land that is now part of the US. But the native of Genoa became increasingly commemorated in the US as Italian immigrants flocked to the country and politicians sought to win their support.

Indeed, it was the lynching of 11 Italian-American immigrants in New Orleans in 1891 that led to the first Columbus Day celebration in the US, led the following year by President Benjamin Harrison. President Franklin D Roosevelt designated Columbus Day as a national holiday in 1934.

Trump has long complained about Democrats tearing down statues of Columbus, a complaint he made again in Sunday's post. In 2017, he spoke out against a review of the 76-foot-tall statue of the explorer in New York's Columbus Circle that then-Mayor Bill de Blasio had ordered. It remains in place today but other statues have been defaced or torn down.

In 2020, Trump's administration paid to restore a Columbus statue in Baltimore that was dumped in the harbour during protests against the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.