NORTHAMPTON — “People always say that Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas and how he was a hero and gave us this land,” one Jackson Street School fifth grader wrote in a recent letter to the city. “Well, he did not discover America. There were Native Americans already living here.”

That’s just one letter of many that the fifth grade tweeted at the city on Monday, asking that Northampton remove Columbus Day from all of its materials.

It all started when Jackson Street fifth grade teacher Nick Ames got a school email with a document from the city’s Human Resources Department with a listing of holidays for 2020 and 2021.

The class had been learning about colonial history, Ames said. “I asked my class if they noticed anything about the holiday calendar, and they picked up on Columbus Day being on there and it being listed in front of Indigenous People’s Day,” he wrote in an email to the Gazette. The documents, also on the city website, listed city holidays for 2020 and 2021 and included “Columbus Day/Indigenous People’s Day.” Mayor David Narkewicz wrote in an email to the Gazette that “this is an internal HR holiday list for employees and is not a list of recognized City of Northampton holidays.”

Ames’s class did some research and found that the city formally changed Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day in 2016. “So, we decided to write letters to the City of Northampton asking them to look into this, fix it so that Columbus Day is removed from all materials/documents published on City masthead, and educate anyone reading the letters why we should care about this issue,” Ames wrote. “I am hoping to show my students that their voices can be heard, that they can effect change in their local community and that the adults will do the right thing.”

Ames started tweeting his students’ letters on Monday, tagging Mayor David Narkewicz and Superintendent John Provost, among others.

One student pointed out Columbus was a slave trader and said he should not be celebrated. “Instead I think we should celebrate the Native Americans that he affected in horrible ways,” the student wrote.  

“Columbus built a story of success on the suffering and death of others,” another fifth grader wrote. “I want all students to learn the correct history of America.”

Glenda Stoddard, the city’s Human Resources Director, told the Gazette the issue would be corrected and a new listing reissued. She added that the sheet is meant to inform city employees of recognized holidays and “matches the negotiated language in many of our union contracts.”

In school publications, Provost said the day is denoted as “Indigenous Peoples’ Day/State Holiday.”

For the record, the Gazette styles the holiday name as Indigenous Peoples Day, without an apostrophe, per the Associated Press.

Narkewicz said he thinks the double name was used to refer to the state recognized holiday, which is Columbus Day, and the city recognized holiday, which is Indigenous Peoples Day. On Tuesday morning, he noted that the 2021 holiday list was updated online to list the day as Indigenous Peoples Day and “State Holiday.” 

Greta Jochem can be reached at gjochem@gazettenet.com.