MOORHEAD, MINN. (KFGO) – A large crowd attended Monday night’s Moorhead City Council meeting with loud applause and cheers from the audience as council members voted 7-1 to approve a resolution that recognizes Indigenous People’s Day annually on the second Monday in October, the same day as Christopher Columbus Day.
Heather Keeler, a member of the Moorhead Human Rights Commission, helped work for two-and-a-half years to get the resolution to the council.
She said, “this is something that is really important to us. We don’t get a lot of wins…suicide rates are extremely high and we also deal with a large amount of murdered and missing indigenous women and so if there is something we can celebrate and be really proud of, I want our community to be a part of this.”
The city of Fargo recognized Indigenous People’s Day in 2015. Grand Forks just approved replacing Columbus Day.