SEATTLE — Monday is Seattle's second Indigenous Peoples' Day, a holiday focused on celebrating the culture and contributions of native people. Hundreds of people gathered in downtown to celebrate the day.
"A lot of these things weren't allowed to happen or exist until relatively recently," said Jason Vickers, an enrolled member of the NItmuc tribe in Massachusetts. He is an Indigenous chef and creator in Seattle.
"There were laws in this area until 1978 called the Potlatch Laws and if you were found practicing traditional songs or practicing traditional medicine, you could be incarcerated for that, " he said. "If you want to know why we're celebrating our existence and our resilience, it's because of that. Because we weren't allowed to for a really long time, and I'm talking about the 70s, I'm not talking about the 20s. I'm talking about relatively recently, so that's what makes these things important."
"This event is important to me because I too come from generations of people who weren't allowed to express their indigeneity and their love for it and their pride in it out loud," Vickers said.
Indigenous Peoples' Day is not a federal holiday, but ten states and hundreds of cities have adopted the holiday, in lieu of Columbus Day.
"But what we're doing with Indigenous Day is taking that energy back and reinvigorating it and using it as an opportunity to celebrate our existence, celebrate our survival, " said Vickers, "Obviously, there's medicine for the body but more importantly there's medicine for the spirit and medicine for the community so with native people we weave ourselves together with these songs, so yes these songs are medicine."