Songs of celebration herald Seattle’s fourth annual Indigenous Peoples’ Day

People from tribal communities from across the Pacific Northwest marked Indigenous Peoples’ Day with a celebratory march through Seattle and ended with an evening gathering at Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center.

This year’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day was the fourth since the city council’s unanimous 2014 approval of a resolution to rename Columbus Day. That decision represented three years of effort on the part of local First People activists and the legislation’s drafters, and it followed the lead of other cities that changed the Columbus Day holiday to honor Native Americans.

The Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center is a Native American cultural community center for people of all tribes. Before 1970, the center had been known as the Fort Lawton military base. Native American activists staged a non-violent takeover and occupation of the land, and completed the cultural center in 1977.

Taylor McAvoy

Taylor McAvoy recently graduated from the University of Washington with a bachelor's degree in Journalism and a minor in Law, Societies, and Justice. She has been a freelance reporter and photographer for Seattle publications including The Seattle Globalist, The International Examiner, Crosscut, and The News Tribune. Her reporting on the 2018 Washington State legislative session for the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association was published across the state. She also reported in Bangkok for Khaosod English in the summer of 2018.