Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2026: Celebrations of respect

Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription, on Patreon, or on Stripe. Help us produce all the original, high-quality content we publish week after week despite the challenges of AI deleting content, anti-social media, inflation and other obstacles.

Indigenous Peoples’ Day was first officially proclaimed by United States President Joe Biden in 2021. Recognizing that it is imperative to defend the rights and dignity of Indigenous peoples who were here long before the colonization of the Americas began, Biden also admitted that United States federal policies systematically sought to assimilate and displace Native peoples and eradicate Native cultures.

Kerri Malloy, a professor of Indigenous and Native American Studies at San Jose State University, told NPR that Columbus’ arrival in the Americas “triggered a mass genocide of indigenous peoples throughout the Western Hemisphere,” which included the spread of deadly diseases among them, the theft of their lands, and forced conversion to Christianity.

Why should each of us celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day, when so much has changed in the 250 years of our nation? There is so many reasons to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Here are some.

• Look around you, American residents. The land you stand, live, work and love on is an indigenous homeland. Its people deserve our respect.
• We rarely hear the stories of indigenous people or their perspectives. October’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day is an invitation to open our minds and learn about the people, cultures and events that shaped this land.
• When we are children in the United States, we are taught that the Wampanoag people held a great party to celebrate their guests, the pilgrims. In reality, the Pilgrims considered their indigenous saviors “infidels” and inferior, according to the Zinn Project. The “hosts” provided and served the food, but did not sit next to their unwanted European guests.
• When we stop to appreciate Native American cultures, we see rich traditions, honorable histories, and dogged determination. Indigenous stories tell familiar narratives with authenticity and stark illumination.
• Celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day allows us to offer our gratitude to those who have protected the Earth at great personal cost, even as European-Americans have poisoned it by burning fossil fuels.

How do we start? Perhaps we will hear from indigenous elders who dedicate their lives to life-giving acts of “intentional decolonization, our way of keeping alive a simple custom that has become sacred.”

We can respect indigenous self-determination in the United States. Research indicates that three priorities remain important for indigenous peoples: food security, indigenous knowledge and practices, and the transmission of traditional culture and ways of life to younger generations.

Of all of them, the urgency of building food sovereignty in indigenous communities is “absurd,” argues Danielle Nierenberg of the Food Tank.

“Food insecurity levels among Native American households are significantly above the national average,” it continues. “But when indigenous communities set the terms of their own food and agricultural systems, land management practices, economic structures, cultural expressions and health policies, things change for the better. There is a deep wisdom in these food customs, a wisdom that has lasted for thousands of years and that can continue to protect and nourish communities to this day.”

We can look to indigenous ethnobotanists for guidance. We all depend on plants and their important pollinators for our existence and survival. Plants provide food, medicine, shelter, dyes, fibers, oils, resins, gums, soaps, waxes, latex, tannins, and even contribute to the air we breathe. Through indigenous ethnobotany, we can promote forestry, agricultural diversity and wild or domestic crops while making better use of land, water and ancestral knowledge to improve local food systems.

Challenging America’s founding myth called Manifest Destiny, the holiday reminds us that indigenous peoples have the knowledge and practices necessary for the United States and the global community to implement and expand climate action. We can protect indigenous people who want to transition to clean energy.

The climate crisis and its accompanying impacts and risks have caused many indigenous peoples to reconsider their habits of dependence on fossil fuels for energy, transportation and amenities. Improving the quality of life of indigenous peoples includes the movement towards clean and renewable energy sources. Indigenous-led organizations and tribal nations are developing their own energy futures, on their own terms.

Of course, there is much, much more to do for tribes to transition to renewable energy independence. The task is enormous. Indigenous peoples contribute the least to greenhouse gas emissions, but they are among the first to face the direct consequences of the climate crisis.

For example, the climate crisis is rapidly altering the shape of the northwest coastal regions: their ecosystems, their coastlines, and their ways of life. Alaska Native villages are especially at risk of severe infrastructure damage from climate-related environmental impacts, including sea level rise, erosion, and extreme weather events. Select tribes can relocate inland if they wish, with built-in safeguards to protect tribal sovereignty while revitalizing their communities.

Fracking is another in a long line of incalculable losses that the native peoples of North America have suffered. In the last decade alone, the U.S. EPA stripped nearly 40 tribes of their ability to make critical decisions regarding fracking, agricultural pollution, and the dumping of toxic waste on their own lands.

Essential to improving the resilience of global ecosystems, indigenous peoples have traditional and local knowledge to interpret and react to the impacts of the climate crisis in ways quite different from Western approaches.

Nature-based solutions are an important approach, as they restore urban biodiversity by addressing ecological damage, improving air and water quality, and supporting ecological processes at multiple scales, they are beginning to be considered effective options. And these solutions come from the ancient world. Ensuring the full and inclusive participation of indigenous peoples in planning and decision-making for nature-based solutions is good for everyone.

Final thoughts

We must learn about Indigenous practices in this era where urban residency is increasing exponentially and our generation of children has never been more disconnected from the outdoors. We need to find ways to understand nature and treat the Earth with respect. This means experiencing it viscerally and personally and also turning to those with ancient knowledge to guide us.

We must look to the indigenous peoples who came before us and recognize that the knowledge we possess from Western science may not be sufficient to answer questions about protecting the Earth. We must learn from indigenous customs while we can.