Indigenous Peoples Day celebrations, are part of a long history of resistance, Indigenous internationalism, and solidarity with other oppressed peoples:

In 1977, the International Indian Treaty Council, the international arm of the American Indian Movement, called for the global end of the celebration of Columbus Day and declared instead the International Day of Solidarity and Mourning with Indigenous Peoples.

The UN Committee on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Apartheid, and Colonialism passed the resolution, with the support of many organizations, such as the African National Congress and the Palestine Liberation Organization

In 1982, Spain/Vatican proposed a 500-year commemoration of Columbus at the UN GA. The entire African delegation, in solidarity with Indigenous peoples of the Americas, walked out of the meeting in protest of celebrating colonialism—the very system the UN was supposed to end.

The commemoration was crushed, and the UN declared a celebration of the World’s Indigenous Peoples Day and the Decade for the World’s Indigenous Peoples. The second Decade was declared in 2005, and the UN adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007.

Despite the celebration of Indigenous Peoples Day, an estimated 370 million Indigenous peoples living in some 90 countries still constitute 15 percent of the world’s poor, and one third of the 900 million people across the globe living in extreme poverty.

Indigenous peoples are also disproportionately subject to state persecution, sexual violence, discrimination, social exclusion, poverty, and homelessness, all symptoms of ongoing colonization and corporate exploitation.

This is why The Red Nation, in coalition with many groups, understands the celebration of Indigenous Peoples Day must be met with serious demands to address the conditions of Native life:

The end of border town violence, the eviction of corporate polluters from Native lands, and the upholding of treaty rights for Native people on- and off-reservation.

Indigenous peoples’ continued existence is a product of the ancestors’ resistance to colonialism and capitalism. Our future and the earth’s future depend on carrying forward this sacred duty, a duty that deserves celebration.