Farewell, Columbus — Grafton Town Meeting adopts Indigenous People’s Day, recognizes Juneteenth

In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety-Two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. But in Twenty Hundred and Twenty-One, Grafton Town Meeting kicked out that bum.

Or, at least, it approved the renaming of Columbus Day, the October holiday named for Italian explorer Christopher Columbus who, the story goes, “discovered” America while trying to find a shortcut to India. Hereafter in Grafton, it is officially known as Indigenous People’s Day, named for the Native Americans Columbus and his crew enslaved as they colonized their home.

Town Meeting also authorized the holiday of Juneteenth, which falls on June 19, to recognize the day when the last of the slaves were emancipated after the Civl War. While Gov. Charlie Baker declared it a state holiday last year, towns are given the option to adopt it.

“This shows that we want to do better as a community,” said Amar Clark, one of the sponsors of the citizens petition to pivot the holiday to recognize Indigenous People. He recalled last year’s decision to eliminate the Grafton High School Indian mascot, which had many Grafton residents arguing that the mascot represented respect for the Hassanamisco tribe that still has a reservation on Brigham Hill Road. “This is not a radical idea and we want to be among the leaders in this change.”

In a letter on Nipmuc Nation letterhead, read aloud at Town Meeting and written by Cheryll Toney Holley, Sonksq of the Hassanamisco Band of Nipmuc Nation, and Brittney Walley, anti-mascot representative of the Chaubunagungamaug Band of Nipmuck Indians, Columbus’ impact was described.

“Columbus never set foot in what is today known as Grafton,” they wrote. “He did, however, spend time in the Caribbean, including present-day Cuba and the Bahamas. And while there, he committed insidious acts against local Indigenous Peoples—specifically, the Lucayan, Taíno, and Arawak. A pioneer of murder, rape, bodily mutilation, slavery, theft, violent colonization, and ecological damage, Columbus is today recognized as a ‘forefather’ of systemically oppressive racism. Statues erected in his memory do not provide a proper platform capable of conveying this fact; they only help perpetuate an oversimplified version of his voyages. This distorted history is harmful to all and is difficult to resolve. It’s challenging getting people to accept that they’ve been lied to, especially when the lie was perpetuated for years under the guise of a United States historic holiday.

“Grafton is within the ancestral homelands of Nipmuc. In our Nipmuc community, we feel the pain of our sister nations that were harmed by Columbus, and we feel the weight of his acts despite him not being the specific person who colonized our specific homelands,” they wrote. I” know we are tired of explaining that Columbus did not, in fact, discover anything.”

But Carroll Westgate, a member of the Knights of Columbus, saw it differently. He spoke of the history of the Knights, a Catholic fraternal organization, and its charitable work. He was not in favor of renaming Columbus Day, originally created to honor Italian Americans.

“You want to downgrade Columbus?” he asked. “Nobody is perfect.”

Lauren Welch and Danae Harper, Grafton High students who graduated Friday night, had their own history lesson: years of learning that Columbus was a hero without mention of exactly what happened to the people who were already in the New World after European colonization. They expressed hope that future students would have more in depth lessons on colonization and manifest destiny.

School Committee member Laura Often agreed. “This isn’t a canceling of Columbus,” she said, adding that the schools will be looking at their curriculum to update the teaching of European expansion to the New World to reflect the full history.

Indigenous People’s Day passed with a large majority while Juneteenth received little debate and very few no votes. Both were brought by citizens petitions from Grafton RISE (Racial Inclusion and Social Equity).

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