Changing the Name: 

Two students in the Needham Public School’s system are fighting to have the second Monday of October, currently known in the Needham Public School system (and calendar) as Columbus Day, changed to Indigenous People’s Day. Fernanda Pinto is a junior at Needham High School and Nick Tuchin is an eighth grader at Pollard. The two are working together to make this change, and rallying both the middle and high school around the project. The pair were both originally working towards this goal on their own, before Dr. Gutekanst put them together on the project after being contacted by both of them. Pinto presented the idea to the Select Board this past summer, and the pair has also reached out to Mr. Sicotte, Dr. Gutekanst, and the Town Manager, Kate Fitzpatrick. They were told to gain consensus from the town, but not given many particulars on how to go about making this change at the beginning. They began working with the Needham Diversity Initiative (NDI) on a subcommittee with the goal of renaming the day as Indigenous People’s Day, and presented at NDI’s 2020 Diversity Summit. Pinto and Tuchin presented to the School Committee on April 6th. 

While many students may have been bothered by the hypocrisy of Columbus Day, these two have decided to act on it. Tuchin told us he was inspired to work on this project originally because he thought his mom had Native American heritage, and felt changing Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day was important to this heritage. He later found out that his mom instead had native South American heritage, but was still interested in making this change in the Needham community. For Pinto, the name of the day was something that had been in the back of her mind for a while, but when images surfaced this summer during the BLM protests in Boston of a statue of Christopher Columbus in Boston that had been beheaded, Pinto realized just how crazy it was that we celebrate Columbus after everything we know about what he’s responsible for. They did consider the opposing side of the argument, which is that many people view the day as part of their heritage, particularly members of the Italian American community, whom Pinto said give the biggest push back to the idea of changing the day to Indigenous People’s Day. 

Leading up to their School Committee presentation, Pinto says, “We do really want to emphasize that this isn’t just what some random people wanted,” referring to herself and Tuchin. She says the project has the support of various groups around the community, as well as Indigenous People’s Day Massachusetts. However, to demonstrate more support within the Needham school community itself, the pair sent out a form to students and teachers at both Needham High School and Pollard Middle School, with Pinto spearheading the project at the high school, and Tuchin pushing it at Pollard. As of March 25th, they had received 364 responses to their survey, with 93% of teachers supporting the change, 3% opposed, and 2.8% saying they would need more information. From students, 80.2% supported the change, 5.9% opposed it, 6.2% would like more information, and 7.7% said they were indifferent to a change. On the form, there was also a space for students and teachers to elaborate on their opinions, and they received a lot of responses about how this was a great idea, but also some saying that any negative actions by Columbus were in the past and that he ‘discovered America’ and deserved to be celebrated for that. There was also a response claiming that switching the day from Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day would be like switching Holocaust Memorial Day to Jewish People’s Day, which the pair seemed rather confused by. In response to comments like these, Pinto says, “I just think it's really important to remember the facts and the historical evidence of who Christopher Columbus was… From his direct order indigenous people were forced into servitude and slavery,” and elaborated that she hoped in the future it would be great if there was a curriculum surrounding this for students in elementary schools so that the full history, instead of the more white-washed and toned down history, was taught to and accepted by students at a younger age. 

Pinto and Tuchin are optimistic about their prospects going into the School Committee presentation on April 6th, buoyed by strong support from the Needham school community. They hope that Needham will soon join towns in Massachusetts such as Brookline, Cambridge, Marblehead, and Somerville who have already changed the day to Indigenous People’s Day.