The New Haven Board of Alders is scheduled to hold hearings this week on whether the city should turn Columbus Day into “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.” Although the proposed resolution does not mention Columbus by name, it calls upon the city to “permanently recognize ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Day” on the second Monday in October each year — the day currently set aside by the federal government to honor Christopher Columbus.

Columbus, it seems, has fallen out of favor — wrongly blamed for every horrible thing done to native people in all of the Americas, from the time of the Encounter to the present. What started in 1991 in Berkeley, Calif., as a fringe movement to trash the Admiral of the High Seas is now part of a growing trend. Ironically, even Columbus, Ohio, last year succumbed to the pressure, canceling its celebration of the man for whom the city was named. New Haven should not follow suit.