You'll likely find it useful to keep an online log of all communications and steps taken while renaming Columbus Day in your city/university/etc. This will help you, your City Council, and your community members to review all the important information (and any flawed information) that's been presented. This will help make the correct course of action obvious over time. Keeping a log will also help if anyone joins your effort, or if your initial efforts are ignored and someone wants to pick up where you left off.

*If you ever decide to abandon your website/log, be sure to first archive it at a site like www.archive.today or web.archive.org for future reference.

IMPORTANT: The materials on this page are just placeholders/samples, and are not licensed for re-distribution. They're intended to demonstrate how records were kept for one campaign to rename Columbus Day in one city. When launching your website, be sure to delete all the materials on this page, and then replace with your own. If you're just getting started, you can temporarily replace this page with a simple "Coming Soon" page.

This sample campaign's initial correspondence mentions "Native American Day." However, it was later determined that "Indigenous Peoples' Day" is the more appropriate choice because:
1) It aligns with a 1977 proposal by a delegation of Indigenous nations to the United Nations-sponsored International Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas.
2) It aligns with what 100+ other cities/states/universities have already done, and remaining consistent will make for an easier nationwide transition.
3) Since Indigenous people lived on this continent long before it was called America by Europeans, there's inherent conflict in the term "Native American."
4) The word "native" is often used to mean simply "born in a place." For example, everyone born in California might call themselves a California native. There's no such confusion with the word "indigenous."

After this City Council initially rejected "Indigenous Peoples' Day", this advocate proposed a "heritage day" instead. However, fixing a mistake with another mistake is not a solution:

1) Establishing an "Italian Heritage Day" or "Community Heritage Day" on the second Monday of October would be like establishing a German Heritage Day on the day Hitler invaded Poland or started exterminating Jews. It would be another mistake. Deviating at all from a straight rename to "Indigenous Peoples' Day" would conflict with the 1977 UN Resolution that started this movement, and set a flawed example for other cities.

2) While establishing an "Italian Heritage Day" is a great idea (see homepage "explore more" section), it must not be on the second Monday of October.