In 2021, Concord City Council voted to change a city holiday, renaming the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. This year, a new state law compels New Hampshire’s towns and cities to recognize it by its traditional name, Columbus Day.

A handful of localities now have a choice to make: Will they recognize Columbus Day as designated by the new law or keep their votes to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day?

Mayor Byron Champlin said Concord will do both.

“We are basically keeping Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” he said, while “footnoting” the statute to comply with state regulations.

Concord will “continue to acknowledge the Indigenous people” who lived in the area, Champlin said. The city doesn’t traditionally host any celebrations for the holiday besides closing its offices. Its website lists Oct. 14 as Indigenous Peoples’ Day, followed by a bold asterisk that adds that “this holiday is identified as Columbus Day under New Hampshire State law, RSA 288:1.”

That statute outlines state-recognized holidays, all of which localities will have to follow as a result of HB 1014, which Gov. Chris Sununu signed this summer. The bill didn’t relate to holidays at all in its first form – the original draft sought to increase voting education and access to voter registration for high school students. The Senate amended the bill to require municipalities to use the state-designated names of holidays in all their official communication.

In recent years, groups in New Hampshire and nationally have advocated to switch the holiday to Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Robert Goodby, an anthropology professor at Franklin Pierce University, said this took hold because of the “atrocities” Christopher Columbus committed against the native people in the Caribbean and his role in bringing the African slave trade to the U.S. 

Others argue that Columbus Day is a symbol of Italian-American pride, Goodby said, after overcoming anti-immigrant rhetoric to become part of the “fabric” of the U.S.

“Columbus Day comes out of that. It comes out of the ascendancy of a despised immigrant group into the mainstream of America,” Goodby said. “That’s not how most people think about it, of course, but that’s what the origins are.”

Manchester Sen. Lou D’Allesandro spearheaded this addition to HB 1014. He views Columbus Day as a tribute to Italian Americans who suffered persecution during the 19th century. He intended the law to protect it and other state holidays, like Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

That doesn’t preclude localities from recognizing other holidays, only from replacing the current ones.

“You can create Indigenous Peoples’ Day if you want, nothing wrong with that, but don’t use it to take the place of an existing holiday,” D’Allesandro said. “I want to keep Columbus Day because of the great history of Columbus Day and the rationale for creating Columbus Day, and to save the other holidays … We created these holidays for a reason. There’s no reason to eliminate them.”

Other towns, like Hopkinton, which adopted the holiday in 2018, will do something similar. Neal Cass, who’s served as the town administrator since 2009, said he views it as recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ Day “on top of” Columbus Day. The town calendar informs residents that offices will be closed on Columbus Day and adds in parentheses that “the Town of Hopkinton has also designated it Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”

When asked his feelings on the state law, Cass simply said, “I always support local control.”

In Warner, a local official said they aren’t yet sure what they’ll do about the change but that the matter will likely go before the select board. Warner currently refers to the holiday as “Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples’ Day” on the town website.

Myriad other localities have also adopted Indigenous Peoples’ Day, including Plymouth, Keene, Dover, Portsmouth and Durham, which was the first in the state to do so back in 2017. A few others have as well.

These efforts have even made an appearance in the corner office – Goodby said it was “new and different” when Sununu made a proclamation last year dubbing November as Indigenous Peoples’ Heritage Month. He also recognized the Abenaki people as New Hampshire’s Indigenous people. The Abenaki and their ancestry in the state go back almost 13,000 years.

It’s all still “caught up” in larger culture wars, though, Goodby said – how people view the holiday depends on what society decides to include in history and how society decides to present it.

“It’s a complicated business,” Goodby said.

Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, or send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.