Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Looking Forward To Celebrating Indigenous People's Day Possibly With The Texas Kickapoo Tribe

Every once in awhile, well, actually, almost every day, I'll be reading one the online versions of one of the newspapers in my old home zone of Washington and find myself thinking, well, that is a headline that will likely never been seen in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Like the headline above.

Can you imagine the Fort Worth City Council causing natives to get celebratory by replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous People's Day? I don't know if there are any Indigenous People still in Fort Worth to do any celebrating. Most were moved via a primitive form of eminent domain abuse, a long, long time ago, with most who survived being slaughtered ending up in Oklahoma, like Quanah Parker.

We do have a Quanah Parker Park in Fort Worth, though. So, there is that.

Seattle is not the first American town to celebrate Indigenous People's Day. That honor goes to Berkeley, California and Denver, Colorado.

I have long known that Columbus Day is a federal holiday. I did not know til today that four states opt out of Columbus Day. Those four would be Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon and South Dakota. I don't know if Alaska, Hawaii  and Oregon have a Columbus Day replacement, like Indigenous People's Day, but I do know that South Dakota replaces Columbus Day with Native American Day.

It is fitting that South Dakota celebrates Native American Day. What with the shady way the Black Hills were taken from the Sioux. And what with the last massacre of the Indian Wars taking place in South Dakota at Wounded Knee.

Other American towns have cancelled Columbus Day, such as San Francisco, which celebrates Italian Heritage Day instead, I'm assuming because a lot of San Franciscans are of Italian descent and Christopher Columbus was Italian. I may be assuming incorrectly.

One would think Columbus, Ohio would celebrate Columbus Day. Instead the Columbus, Ohio Columbus Day Parade has been cancelled since the 1990s, due to the revisionist modern view of Christopher Columbus and his "discovery" exploits.

Unlike Texas, Washington has a large population of Native Americans, with some 30 tribes owning tribal land. Below, from Wikipedia, is a list of all the federally recognized reservations in Washington, followed by a list of the federally recognized reservations in Texas....

Name of ReservationDate Reservation EstablishedArea of Reservation (acres)Location of Reservation
Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation18604,225southeastern Grays Harbor County and southwestern Thurston County
Colville Indian Reservation18721,400,000[2]primarily southeastern section of Okanogan County and the southern half of Ferry County
CowlitzCowlitz County near Longview, Washington
Hoh Indian Reservation1893[3]477the Pacific Coast of Jefferson County
Jamestown S'Klallam Indian Reservationnear Sequim Bay, in extreme eastern Clallam County
Kalispel Indian Reservationthe town of Cusick, in Pend Oreille County
Lower Elwha Indian Reservationthe mouth of the Elwha River, in Clallam County
Lummi Indian Reservation185513,600west of Bellingham, in western Whatcom County
Makah Indian Reservation185530,010on Cape Flattery in Clallam County
Muckleshoot Indian Reservation1874[3]3,533southeast of Auburn in King County.
Nisqually Indian Reservation18545,000 (approx.)[4]western Pierce County and eastern Thurston County
Nooksack Indian Reservationtown of Deming, Washington in western Whatcom County
Port Gamble Indian ReservationPort Gamble Bay in Clallam County
Port Madison Reservation (Suquamish Indian Reservation)western and northern shores of Port Madison, northern Kitsap County
Puyallup Indian Reservation1854–1856[3]18,062primarily northern Pierce County
Quileute Indian Reservationsouthwestern portion of the Olympic Peninsula in Clallam County
Quinault Indian Reservation1856208,150primarily the north coast of Grays Harbor County
Samish Indian ReservationAnacortes, pending outcome of legal claims
Sauk-Suiattle Indian Reservation
Shoalwater Bay Indian Reservation
Skokomish Indian Reservation
Snoqualmie Indian Reservation
Spokane Indian Reservation1881133,344
Squaxin Island Indian Reservation18541,418 (Squaxin Island) / 1,715 (total)
Stillaguamish Indian Reservation
Swinomish Indian Reservation
Tulalip Indian Reservation185524,300
Upper Skagit Indian Reservation
Yakama Indian Reservation1890s–19141,118,149

Wikipedia's American Indian reservations in Texas article does not have a table listing all the tribe's reservations in Texas, because there are only three tribes to list....
  • Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas
  • Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas
  • Ysleta del Sur Pueblo

The only one of the three Texas tribes I'd heard of before is the Kickapoo, due to having made a webpage about the town of Eagle Pass, which is near the Kickapoo reservation and their Kickapoo Lucky Eagle Casino.

I wonder if the Kickapoo celebrate Columbus Day? Or do they opt to celebrate Indigenous People's Day instead?

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