On the second Monday of October, the US government celebrates Columbus Day as a federal holiday. But an increasing number of state and local governments are moving away from the holiday, choosing instead to recognise Indigenous Peoples' Day. Rather than honouring European explorer Christopher Columbus, who landed in the present-day Bahamas in 1492, the day remembers and celebrates the history and culture of the Native American peoples. To generations of indigenous people, Columbus represents the start of the colonisation of the Americas and the dispossession and the death of millions. By 1900, it was estimated that 80 per cent of the US indigenous population was wiped out.