Those gathered around the towering statue of Christopher Columbus at Union Station’s Columbus Circle prayed, sang God Bless America, saluted the flag, and honored the legacy of the Italian explorer who changed the course of human history. The celebration also included advocacy for the federal holiday and expressed opposition to “revisionist history” that paints Columbus as an evil man who brought disease and death to the “indigenous people” on the North American continent. A number of states have changed the holiday to Indigenous Peoples Day.

While Columbus has been regarded as a courageous and pious man throughout history, in recent years “many also came to view Western (i.e. European) civilization, so dominant for centuries, as an evil influence that had unjustly invaded, exploited and despoiled the innocent world of the Americans, led, moreover, by a greedy, cruel, mendacious, grasping, self-seeking adventurer who brought enslavement and genocide to native populations, and environmental disaster to a paradise where the innocent inhabitants had generally lived in an almost preternatural harmony with nature and each other,” the event program stated.