Columbus still afloat in Colorado
BOULDER, Colo.
The Colorado State House of Representatives’ Local Government Committee has indefinitely postponed a bill to repeal Columbus Day statewide, but the bill’s proponents are actually somewhat encouraged. It’s the furthest the bill has ever gotten.
HB 17-1327’s sponsor, Joseph Salazar, R-Thornton, posted on his Facebook page that the bill’s passage by the first committee to consider it – State, Veterans and Military Affairs – by an 8-5 count last month marked “a historic moment.” Previous versions of the bill have never cleared a committee.
This bill was referred to the Local Government Committee, which tabled it on May 3. Committees meet during the interim between legislative sessions, May through December.
Richard Silversmith, a Navajo residing in Salazar’s district, said it’s hard to get too disappointed by the bill’s current stagnation, considering “the legislature has been wrecking this thing every year for 15 years.”
Silversmith, a Christian pastor, says he prefers to look at the big picture. He thinks of the struggle for Native rights as a war with many battlefronts … And Natives are slowly advancing.
Last year, for example, the Denver City Council unanimously passed a resolution declaring the second Monday of October (when it used to celebrate Columbus Day) Indigenous People’s Day, following 14 other cities nationwide.
And Salazar’s 2015 bill that would have required any Native American school sports mascots to be approved by a nine-member all-Native committee passed the House – albeit by one vote. (It died in the Senate, but Salazar has promised to resurrect it.)
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Highway 264,
I-40, WB @ Winslow