Brown University professors vote to recognize "Indigenous People's Day"

Faculty members voted Tuesday at the monthly faculty meeting to officially change the name of Fall Weekend to Indigenous People’s Day on the academic calendar in response to a student movement led by Native Americans at Brown and other student groups. The name change will be effective next fall.

NAB and other students rallied outside Salomon Center before the meeting took place, holding signs reading “250+ years of occupying indigenous land,” “Native Americans discovered Columbus,” “We don’t celebrate genocide” and “#Changethename.”

The vote was in response to a petition signed by over 1,100 faculty members, staff, alums and students urging the University to recognize indigenous peoples on the day formally celebrating the oppression instigated by Christopher Columbus, said Thomas Roberts, chair of the Faculty Executive Committee and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.