In a bizarre meeting by even Santa Barbara City Council standards, the council voted 6-0, with one abstention, to recognize Italian Heritage Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day on the same day — Columbus Day, the second Monday of October. 

The discussion featured a power outage while a Franciscan Friar was speaking.

Councilman Oscar Gutierrez lectured the Italian-Americans in the room for not liking his compromise suggestion to create a joint Italian-Americans Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day, prompting a blunt response from an audience member.

Councilwoman Kristen Sneddon passionately argued for an indigenous peoples’ day of its own, not shared by Italian-Americans.

And Randy Rowse covered his face with his hand in frustration that the council was even discussing the matter at all.

Gutierrez was aghast that the Italian Americans in the room didn’t want to share the day with the Chumash. 

“I am a little surprised that I made a suggestion of uniting two groups of people that had a rocky history and I get met with ‘it would be disrespectful.’ I don’t understand that mindset,” Gutierrez said. “I made a suggestion to bring these two groups together and you took that as disrespect. You made a statement about how if there was a parade you would come and watch it.

“Why wouldn’t you want to come be in that parade alongside the indigenous person?”

“Because it is your day!” an Italian man from the audience yelled. 

Gutierrez responded back: “Columbus has a country named after him: Colombia. He has a district in the United States, Washington D.C. Colleges, streets, parks. It’s not that we have forgotten. This is an opportunity for these two groups of people to come together, but I am just shocked that I am hearing it being interpreted as disrespect as opposed to an opportunity to make peace.”

Councilman Rowse abstained from the vote.

“The fact that this body is in a position to either celebrate or condemn some part of cultural heritage or history is amazing,” Rowse said. “We have other things to do that are city business.”

“What I would like to do is not have this council go down this road because there are a lot of different cultural and historical things that we can talk about,” Rowse said. “To justify this being an agenda item, I am sorry I can’t be with you on this one madame Mayor or Mr. Gutierrez. I think it is not city business.”

Murillo and Gutierrez sent a letter to City Administrator Paul Casey requesting that the matter be placed on Tuesday’s City Council agenda. The pair initially brought  forward the idea to change the second Monday of October to “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” on behalf of “the local Chumash community, the Tribal Trust Foundation and other community organizations.”

The county in October passed Indigenous Peoples’ day without conflict, but about a dozen Italian-Americans attended Tuesday’s council meeting to protest celebrating indigenous people on the same day as the federal Columbus Day holiday.

In a switch from he and Murillo’s original idea, Gutierrez kicked off the meeting Tuesday proposing to recognize both days on the same day because he had heard objections from so many members of the Italian-American community recently.

Several Italian Americans said Tuesday that they have no problem with Indigenous Peoples’ day, as long as it doesn’t fall on Columbus Day.

“One of the mistakes that is made by modern people is to judge what happened in the 15th century from the perspective of the 21st (century) person,” said Dr. Arthur Najera. 

He said Santa Barbara should go the way of San Francisco and recognize two separate days.

“Thank God for Christopher Columbus,” Najera said, because “he discovered the Americas.”

“I look at it as more good than any harm that took place, and I regret that the indigenous suffered so much, but you know, history is replete with that,” he said. “We can’t go on condemning people for that. Let’s not detract from the Italians. They have contributed a tremendous amount to Santa Barbara.”

Dr. William Vollero, president of the Italian Cultural Heritage Foundation, said Columbus was flawed but “very much a man of his time.”

He said he was representing his group’s board of directors, who “live, work and pay taxes locally.”

“Though many of us in our organization are of Italian descent, we are very much in favor of the city designating a set day for honoring the indigenous people of the past and present, but not this historic second Monday of October, which is Columbus Day,” Vollero said.

“We do not believe that sharing the day that the federal government designates as Columbus day is either necessary, respectful of local Italian-Americans, or doing service to Columbus, Italian-Americans or the Chumash population.”

He said the city should practice diversity, rather than divisive politics.

“We ask that the council defeat the resoution and instead designate a separate, alternative recurring day for celebrating the indigenous peoples’ day in recognition of the Chumash history and heritage,” Vollero said. 

Several Chumash individuals spoke at the meeting in favor of the Indigenous Peoples Day. 

“Putting all politics aside, it’s about time,” said Mike Lopez, representing the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians. 

Michael Cordero said he is a citizen and past president of the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation. 

“Our ancestors persevered despite the atrocities they experienced in the missions,” Cordero said. “Indigenous peoples day will be a recognition of that we have been here all along, we’re still here and we will always be here.”

He suggested moving Italian-Americans day to the Memorial Day weekend, when the i madonnari festival takes place at the Santa Barbara Mission.

Father Larry Gosselin, a Franciscan Friar, said he was in support of the indigenous people. 

“Indigenous culture needs to be recognized, it’s long overdue,” Gosselin said. “My heartstrings as a Franciscan, my heartstrings are in Italian culture, with St. Francis of Assisi, my heartstrings are with indigenous people, so I ask that maybe there can be a coming together.”

Sneddon eventually supported the combined day, but only after her motion to honor indigenous people only on the second Monday of October, failed. 

She said that while growing up, the day was always taught as honoring when Columbus discovered America. 

“Chumash are here to say it wasn’t there to discover,” Sneddon said. “The Chumash were here already.”

She said she thinks of it as “first people’s day” and the first people were the Chumash. 

She said she was not in favor of sharing the day.

“I believe Italian Americans need their own celebration and I also firmly believe that the Chumash have not just the right, but really an imperative need to have the history celebrated. I think it is a fine time to name the day Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”

Councilman Gregg Hart called Gutierrez’s suggestion to honor both cultures “an elegant solution.”

“It is about time that we recognize the local people,” Hart said. “It is a matter of respect to recognize the Chumash people as indigenous people. This is the time to do this.”

— Noozhawk staff writer Joshua Molina can be reached at jmolina@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.