Land, Memory, Return: Indigenous Peoples Day — From U.S. Struggles to Philippine Roots
Understanding Indigenous Peoples' Day | Voice of America By J.F.R. Perseveranda Indigenous Peoples Day asks us to reorient our memory and politics. In the United States it is a corrective and a public act of memory — a reclaiming of stories and place from a long history of dispossession, broken treaties, forced assimilation, and cultural erasure. For Filipino Americans, and Filipinos in the archipelago, the day resonates because our histories of colonization are entangled: the Philippines’ own centuries of Spanish and American rule reshaped land, language, religion, and memory. This post centers the plight and resilience of Indigenous nations in the U.S. — and then threads a transpacific narrative that ties those struggles to Philippine Indigenous histories and Fil-Am identity, inviting concrete steps toward decolonial solidarity. Why Indigenous Peoples Day matters Indigenous Peoples Day is more than a replacement calendar date. It is a public effort to stop c...
