Public Comment

Transcript (~38 min @ 19:55)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 19:03 Christopher Cinella: yeah resume recording all right good evening and welcome to the november 16th appropriations committee the time is 7 15 and my name is councillor sanella the chair of the committee I am joined by Vice Chair Laila Migliorelli and voting members, Councillor Tramontozzi, Councillor McMaster, Councillor McNaught, Councillor Eccles, Councillor Garipay, Councillor Stewart, Councillor Thomas, Councillor Jamaleddine, and President Grigoraitis. And pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12th order, suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law and the governor's March 15th order, imposing strict limitation on the number of people that may gather in one place. This meeting of the Appropriations Committee will be conducted via remote participation to the greatest extent possible. We will post an audio or video recording of this transcript or other comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the City of Melville's website and on MMTV3.org. At this time, I'll entertain a motion for public comment.

▶ 20:13 Robb Stewart: Motion to open public comment.

▶ 20:17 Christopher Cinella: Motion to open the floor for public comment made by Councillor Stewart, seconded by Vice Chair Migliorelli. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

▶ 20:25 Speaker 1: yes vice-chair Migliorelli yes Consular Tramontozzi yes Consular McMaster yes Consular McNaught yes Consular Eccles yes Consular Garipay yes yeah Consular Stewart yes Consular Thomas yes I do not see Consular

▶ 20:56 Jen Grigoraitis: I know she was here. President Grigoraitis? Yes, and Councilor Jamaleddine is having connectivity issues. Okay.

▶ 21:02 Christopher Cinella: 10, yes. Okay, so I know we have quite a few people in queue to speak in public comment. Madam Clerk, do you think you could run through the predetermined list of folks just so they know when they'll be up next and then maybe have others that weren't in the list raise their digital hands?

▶ 21:20 Speaker 1: sure so i have a list of uh seven names i believe faris gray jim garrett sandy dixon suki hamson emmett hampson megan rosenberg and jim bennett apologies if i've mispronounced your name they have identified they'd like to speak at least at this time there could be others in the meet in the um attendee list as well so in the

▶ 21:42 Christopher Cinella: meantime i guess if you want to speak please raise your digital hand so okay first first up mr gray i'm going to make him unmute him now

▶ 21:55 Speaker 1: mr gray can you hear us mr gray can you hear us

▶ 22:10 Speaker 1: can any of you guys hear him it was very faint i'm going to unmute him mr gray

▶ 22:28 Speaker 1: he's gone so next one for now maybe he'll rejoin yeah there was another email that just came in

▶ 22:35 Speaker 1: a second ago just so you know oh i didn't see it okay let's do uh mr garrett for now i'm sure he

▶ 22:46 Speaker 2: could try to get back on mr garrett yes can you hear me yes great thank you pardon oh the screen is all yours thank you my name is jim garrett i live at 70 artsmoor road i would like to speak in favor of replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day. History that is not based on facts is mythology. Mythology can be imaginative and entertaining, but when it hurts people, we must ask instead for the real history. The mythology of Cristoforo Colombo as a bold explorer suppresses the reality of Columbus as a cruel tyrant and murderer this is a man who as a matter of policy required that indigenous people who could not produce sufficient gold be executed by cutting off both their hands and letting their letting them bleed to death some of his men practiced bayonet on innocent children with total impunity over a few years he nearly annihilated the taino people of the caribbean Estimates of the number of people his regime killed range up to 12 million people. Fortunately, some Taino people survived. I know of a Taino family living in the Boston area today. Columbus's brutality was exceptional even by the standard of Spanish colonization, and not only to the indigenous people. As a governor of the Spanish-controlled Caribbean region, he was a despot with a flair for torture even to the Spanish colonists who had arrived. when complaints of his tyranny reached spain the king and queen fired him had him brought back in chains and put him in jail do we really want to celebrate this person publicly affirming that columbus is a hero erases this historical truth this erasure is a crime against our students studying history and it is a crime against all indigenous people there is no way that our so

▶ 24:58 Speaker 2: Again, you just went on mute.

▶ 25:03 Speaker 5: You're back.

▶ 25:14 Speaker 2: Okay. Let me see where I was. There is no way that our so-called one community open to all can possibly be welcoming to an indigenous person when we celebrate Columbus. Imagine welcoming a Jewish person into our community while at the same time saying that the Holocaust was really no big deal. is that Jewish person going to feel welcome? Is he or she going to be willing to engage in honest friendship in that context? That's what Melrose is doing to indigenous members of our community right now. I understand that some Italian Americans want to hold on to Columbus Day as a point of heritage pride. If there is anyone hearing this who is in that frame of mind, let me address this. There are so many great Italians of history and so many great Italian Americans. Let's find another person to cherish. Columbus Day was first established federally in 1934 when Italian Americans were an oppressed minority. They grasped Columbus as a symbol to assert their rights as full-fledged citizens. Columbus's actual historical behavior was not widely known then. Today, things are different. More and more people are aware of the monstrosity of Columbus the man. The myth and symbolism of Columbus are dying. If Melrose discusses this today and knowing the truth of Columbus consciously chooses to uphold Columbus for the purpose of Italian-American pride, what kind of publicity do you think the Italian-American community is going to get? That would be winning the battle but losing the war. Celebrating Italian heritage is important. I would welcome an Italian Heritage Day, but let's not hold on to Columbus. I mentioned earlier a Taino family living in the Boston area. If they were to visit Melrose, how would you propose explaining to them that Melrose is one community open to all when we choose to treat them as nothing and, meanwhile, celebrate the tyrant who killed many of their ancestors? Thank you.

▶ 27:17 Speaker 2: Thank you, sir. Madam Clerk, who's next?

▶ 27:23 Speaker 1: Next, I'm going to bring in Sandy Dixon.

▶ 27:41 Speaker 5: I'm just texting you're on mute there we go can you sorry yes you think with all these months okay my name is Sandy Dixon I live at 22 Martin Street thank you for allowing me to address you this evening I would like to express my support for the city of Melrose recognizing indigenous peoples day I write to you as a person of Italian descent and I encourage Melrose to join the communities of Amherst Northampton Brookline Cambridge Somerville and Great Barrington that have chosen to celebrate Indigenous Peoples' Day rather than Columbus Day. Members of Indigenous Peoples' Day Melrose believe that a holiday that celebrates Indigenous people is far more truthful and uplifting than one that honors a man whose legacy is characterized by conquest, slavery, and genocide. This group currently has the support of many local public figures and organizations, including Senator Jason Lewis, the Melrose Human Rights Commission, the Melrose Commission on Women, and the Melrose Historical Commission. It's time to honor the people who are already here and who are still here rather than their concubine. Melrose, Massachusetts, ground zero for the founding of this country, is also the land of Native Americans, and there are endless landmarks with Indigenous origins whose history is never taught or celebrated. We see it in the name of our state, Massachusetts, named after a tribe of Indigenous people from this area, but whose history is not nearly as well known as that of Christopher Columbus. I imagine that many of us never find out about the indigenous people whose history, culture and selves have been all but erased while the names of Natick, the Merrimack River, Lake Quinsigamond and Mount Wachusett, to name a few, remain. Many Italians assert that Columbus Day is at its core a celebration of Italian heritage and that changing the name negatively impacts Italian history. I disagree with this assessment. Both of my maternal grandparents emigrated to the United States from the island of Ponza off the coast of Naples and settled in the Appalachian Hills of West Virginia. My mother's first language was Italian and she and her family experienced significant discrimination. But over time, they are now seen as members of the dominant society. Italians and Roman Catholics are not only part of the fabric of American society, their holidays are nationally celebrated in ways that the Native American culture is not. My grandmother, an excellent cook, would have loved to see how thoroughly we have embraced Italian culture. When my mom came to visit me a few years ago, I proudly took her to Giacomo's Italian restaurant, followed by dessert at Dimitri's Pastry Shop, both of them walking distance from my house. It was not lost on me how easy it was to show off Melrose's love of her heritage, all without having to go into Boston's North End, which she also adores. This is not true of Native American people or their history. We do not know them, ask about them, or honor them, and it's time we do this. When I trained at the Bedford VA, I was struck by their clear and visible effort to show their support of Native American veterans by holding a yearly powwow on the campus. This occurred right at the entrance to their sprawling grounds and could not be missed by anyone entering the facility. This powwow has grown to be a week-long event that makes a statement about the Veterans Administration's desire to honor, and more importantly, to know the real history of these service members. It can be done respectfully and honestly. I hope that Melrose will take this step and consider renaming Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day. Thank you very much.

▶ 31:19 Speaker 1: Thank you, Ms. Dixon. Madam Clerk? Next up is Suki and...

▶ 31:27 Speaker 1: And you've seen the latest two that have come in? I have, yes. Suki and Emmett Hampson.

▶ 31:39 Speaker 6: thank you bring them in now all right suki and emmett you're on okay my name is suki hampson i live here in mellers massachusetts the original land of the massachusetts and pawtucket people i'm 10 years old and was inspired by my mom to speak up about what i believe in i may be young but i have a strong opinion about changing columbus day to indigenous people's day while it is important to remember columbus as a part of our history we should not celebrate him Currently, we celebrate Columbus Day because some people were convinced or believe that Christopher Columbus discovered the New World, currently known as North America. I want to start out by making it clear that he did not. The indigenous Taino people had inhabited the islands where he landed for tens of thousands of years before Christopher Columbus had even come into existence. Columbus never even stepped foot on the land that is now the United States. In fact, Columbus was not even the first explorer to arrive in North America. Leif Erikson, among other Vikings, arrived around 1000 AD, almost 500 years before Columbus did. We should turn the tables and celebrate the indigenous people who inhabited this land before anyone else. To this day, there are still many indigenous people living in our towns and neighborhoods, going to our schools and working alongside us. Even so, living in Melrose my entire life, I have never met an Indigenous person. This is proof that they have been pushed to the back and forced to live in the background. Celebrating a person that killed and undermined their ancestors definitely does not help their feelings of being pushed away. Christopher Columbus wounded the Indigenous Taino people for life by enslaving them and committing genocide. What he did led to the exploitation and killing of other Indigenous tribes across North America. The federal government is continuing to deprive indigenous people of their land and some of their legal rights. The government has designated specific land areas called reservations in various states, such as South Dakota, Arizona, and others. However, the number of indigenous reservations is becoming smaller every day. The government is taking away the small amount of land that they have given to indigenous people, which to me is very contradicting and hypocritical. people in power in the present day are taking after Christopher Columbus and taking away the indigenous people's small amount of land that they have left in order to control them and what they do for these reasons I believe that Mara should take a stand and change Columbus Day to indigenous peoples day once and for all thank you for considering this important matter thank

▶ 34:11 Speaker 2: Thank you, Suki. Okay. The screen is all yours, Emmet.

▶ 34:17 Speaker 7: My name is Emmet Hempson.

▶ 34:23 Speaker 6: I am almost nine years old, and I live in Melrose, Massachusetts. My mom inspired me to write this letter. She thinks we should change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day, and I think so, too. Columbus Day does not include anyone. I believe Melrose should change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day. Christopher Columbus enslaved and killed many innocent Taino people. The arrival of Christopher Columbus was the beginning of the destruction of indigenous life and culture. We currently celebrate a man who found New Orleans, then captured and killed the people who lived there. Think about the Native Americans we hurt by celebrating someone who enslaved and killed their ancestors. And that is why we should change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day. We should stop celebrating Columbus, but we should still remember him and what he did. Thank you.

▶ 35:24 Christopher Cinella: Thank you. Great job. Madam Clerk, could we pull up Miss Betsy Garrett next?

▶ 35:32 Speaker 1: I was wondering, Mr. Ferris Gray, who was first, is back. Shall we put him in and then we'll do Miss Garrett?

▶ 35:38 Speaker 2: Sure. Thank you. Thank you.

▶ 35:42 Speaker 2: Mr. Gray, you're on mute.

▶ 35:55 Speaker 3: Hello, hello, can you hear me? Yes, thank you. Hello. Hello. Thank you. Thank you. Um, my name is Ferris Gray. I am the Sagamore of the Massachusetts tribe at Ponkapok.

▶ 36:06 Speaker 3: I'm here to talk to you about Indigenous Peoples Day, I guess, versus Columbus Day.

▶ 36:14 Speaker 3: I was listening to a few of the young people speak about Christopher Columbus it seems they have a good handle on who he truly was and the atrocities he committed against the arawak and italian people who were the indigenous people of the caribbean christopher columbus was not a nice man

▶ 36:41 Speaker 3: basically um an evil man that would do such things to another human being even his own people were disgusted of his actions and it says a lot about a community or a country and celebrate somebody that did such things if they are unaware of these actions then it's understandable but once they become aware of the actions of someone and then they celebrate that person says a lot christopher columbus terrorized the arawak and the italian people so that makes

▶ 37:20 Speaker 3: him a terrorist. He terrorized them. And today we live where there is terrorism in this world, so we can understand what terrorism is. And to celebrate a terrorist is appalling that we had to have this conversation about anyone that would celebrate a terrorist. Indigenous people need to heal, as all of us need to heal, from the atrocities that were committed here in the United States we cannot even attempt to heal when our colonizers the

▶ 37:59 Speaker 3: ones who colonize us continue to celebrate a terrorist we can't heal the wounds still open this is not something that happened in the 1400s isn't something that happened the 15 1600s something is happening now how are we

▶ 38:15 Speaker 3: supposed to hear? How are our children supposed to hear? I mean the truth has to be known about what happened to the indigenous peoples of all the Americans. It can't be put on the back burner anymore and not talked about. That's not what we do when we talk about World War II and what the Jewish people had to endure. We don't hide from that. We teach our children about that great evil that swept across basically the whole world but when it comes to the things that happen here we seem to throw it in the back burner and not want to talk about it well we need to talk about it because we all need to heal from it you know i always tell people especially in november when thanksgiving comes around because everybody wants to hear from the indigenous people i i always remind people

▶ 39:06 Speaker 3: that this foundation for this country was built on the grace of my ancestors and that is truth it really is that's true it was built on the grace of my ancestors and that's something the indigenous people have to live with every day and so we ask all the communities we ask the state everyone change columbus day make an indigenous people's day show some honor the indigenous people show some honor for us thanksgiving is not something for us that's something for the

▶ 39:42 Speaker 3: colonizers that's not anything for us it's actually a day of mourning for us i mean for once

▶ 39:46 Speaker 3: we ask people to show us some honor first by getting rid of columbus get rid of them teach our children they want to talk about him in schools teach the truth about him and what he did with the arawak and the taino people get rid of the don't celebrate him

▶ 40:10 Speaker 3: celebrate the indigenous people and the fact that we're still here after hundreds of years of being assimilated we're still here i would like to thank everyone for joining this meeting

▶ 40:24 Speaker 3: taking times out of your lives to come and hear people talk i would like to thank this committee for listening to us and we hope that you can see the right thing to do here

▶ 40:42 Speaker 3: you know the indigenous population is watching we pay very close attention to what's happening

▶ 40:55 Speaker 3: with mascots with imagery and really with columbus day so i like thank you for allowing me to speak here um and on behalf of my tribe i'd like to say about a buchanach thank you thank you mr greg

▶ 41:11 Speaker 1: Madam clerk union, miss. Yep.

▶ 41:15 Speaker 5: Hi, hello. Welcome. Hi, I'm Betsy Garrett. I live at 70 arts more road in Melrose. I acknowledge that the city of Melrose is located on the ancestral lands of the Massachusetts tribe. The tribe of indigenous peoples from whom the colony province and Commonwealth have taken their names. We pay our respects to the ancestral bloodline of the Massachusetts tribe and their descendants who still inhabit historic Massachusetts territories today. I am one of the co-founders of Indigenous People's Day Melrose, along with Janet Kellinger and Heather Lavelle, under the advisement of Matooine Monroe, lead organizer for Indigenous People's Day Massachusetts, and Ferris Gray, who you just heard, Sagamore of the Massachusetts tribe of Pankapag. We have been working the past several years to build support to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day in Melrose. Over 100 Melroseans have signed statements of support, along with several Melrose commissions, churches, associations, and businesses. You can see our list of supporters, endorsers, and partners on our webpage, indigenouspeoplesdaymelrose.org. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has designated the second Monday of October as a legal holiday, And while it suggests that it be named Columbus Day, that is not mandated. We ask that in Melrose, we celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day on the second Monday in October, dropping the name Columbus entirely. In doing this, our city would join 11 other Massachusetts cities and towns who celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day, including Cambridge, Marblehead, Salem, and most recently, Newton. Many people ask if you could create a joint holiday with a slash, such as Columbus Day slash Indigenous Peoples Day. This is unacceptable, as it would create a holiday that celebrates a brutal terrorist alongside his victims. While this approach appeases some who desire to retain a familiar name, it does not foster healing or reconciliation. Rather, it reminds us of the ways our society prioritizes the comfort of white people over the trauma of indigenous peoples and the truthful telling of history please remove the name of columbus entirely from the city calendar and replace it with indigenous people's day thank you thank you miss garrett

▶ 43:40 Speaker 1: up next i have megan rosenberg hi megan the screen is yours if you could just state your

▶ 43:46 Christopher Cinella: name and address please miss roberts miss rosenberg can you hear us i think you have

▶ 44:20 Speaker 1: have the Hampson's unmuted mr. Bennett can you hear us mr. Bennett you're on

▶ 44:48 Speaker 8: mute can you go can you hear me now excellent Jim Bennett 45 Wentworth Road

▶ 44:54 Speaker 2: I would hazard a guess that most of the people on this council take no issue with the institution of indigenous people's day but the difficulty comes in removing columbus day for to remove columbus day from the calendar could be viewed as an assault on the heritage of catholics in general and of italian catholics in particular and that interpretation is not

▶ 45:15 Speaker 2: without merit a century ago many of the protestant yankees who dominated towns like melrose viewed catholic immigrants as fundamentally anti-american if not subhuman an article in the boston journal in 1896, for example, described a group of Italian workers on strike here in Melrose as, quote,

▶ 45:33 Speaker 8: an ugly-looking crew, low-browed, swarthy, and desperate, end quote. The Protestant establishment

▶ 45:42 Speaker 2: had lots of reasons to exclude Catholics, but perhaps none was more potent than the assertion that they were recent arrivals. Protestants had built this country and owned it. Catholic

▶ 45:49 Speaker 8: immigrants were merely tenants. Yet Catholics discovered that they had a powerful historical

▶ 45:56 Speaker 2: argument for why they should be included in this country. The pilgrims had arrived in 1620,

▶ 46:03 Speaker 2: yet the Italian Catholic Christopher Columbus had arrived over a century before. None of these recent immigrants, even those from Genoa itself, had ever venerated Columbus while they lived in Europe. But when they came to the United States, they began to honor him because they used Columbus's legacy to secure their own legitimacy and to overcome the bigotry that kept them from living

▶ 46:29 Speaker 2: out the American dream. And it worked. A century later, we live in an America that is the result of that hard struggle for Catholic inclusion. Our president-elect is Catholic. Seven of nine

▶ 46:37 Speaker 2: Supreme Court justices are Catholics. Here in Melrose, at one time in the late 1990s, our mayor, pat guerrero our state representative mike festa our state senator richard to say and our governor

▶ 46:54 Speaker 2: our joe paul salucci were all italian catholics all of this was made possible by those early

▶ 46:58 Speaker 8: immigrant generations who fought for columbus day and it is for that reason that i would argue

▶ 47:07 Speaker 2: if you want to honor all of those catholic immigrants who fought to make america more

▶ 47:16 Speaker 8: inclusive a century ago, then get rid of Columbus Day now. Catholics in America don't need Christopher

▶ 47:21 Speaker 2: Columbus anymore. They are now part of the American mainstream. And with that change in status, Columbus Day has gone from being a holiday of inclusion to a holiday of exclusion, a way of diminishing the value of those peoples and communities who have been in this country long before this country ever was for those of you who like me have catholic immigrant heritage i ask you to extend to our indigenous communities the hand of friendship that our ancestors so rarely felt and vote to abolish columbus day and institute indigenous people's day

▶ 48:03 Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bennett. Next up, I believe, Mr. Mook. Hi, Mr. Mook. You're on mute.

▶ 48:16 Speaker 2: Hi, can you hear me now? Yes. Okay, great. Just state your name and your address, please. Yes. My name is Alistair Mook. I live at 63 Nowell Road, and I'm here as a representative of the Melrose Racial Justice Community Coalition and our group steering committee. I'll be very brief. Our coalition would like to add its support for the establishment of Indigenous Peoples Day in Melrose in replacement of Columbus Day. We consider this a basic racial and ethnic justice issue for our city. At the same time, we would fully support the establishment of additional ethnic and heritage pride days for our city, including an Italian American heritage and culture day some other time in the month of october or at any other time of the year we believe these changes would far better honor the culture and heritage of indigenous people italian americans and our city at large thank you very much thank you next i have

▶ 49:29 Speaker 5: miss jane allen miss allen can can you hear me okay yes if you could just state your name

▶ 49:34 Speaker 5: please in your address thank you um hi everyone nice to see you my name is jane allen i live at 179 east foster street um i am the great granddaughter of rosalie lespina from messina sicily and i'm here to speak to you tonight in favor of celebrating indigenous people's day instead of columbus day to those of you who may feel that this isn't very important or it's not a change you want to make i'll just say that just a few years ago i felt the same way i didn't really understand why this mattered but since then i've come to understand that when we celebrate columbus day um we we actually harm indigenous people um we're celebrating a brutal murderer as the speakers before me have um laid out for you including suki and emmett um and as a corollary to that we stereotype indigenous people and we erase their history so i think this is important um that we're not harming indigenous children but i also think it's important because i think that this harms my own children as well i think it is confusing to them as young people when we send a message when we're celebrating um someone we're casually dehumanizing indigenous people by celebrating Columbus. Finally, I'll just say my husband did a survey of Melrose and he finds that nowhere in the city do we celebrate any indigenous person through a memorial or a plaque or a monument or anything. And I feel like this is an important time that we can begin a new phase of not only acknowledging indigenous people who were here before us, but celebrating them. So So, with that, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it.

▶ 51:26 Speaker 1: Thank you. Next up, I have Lizbeth DeSelm.

▶ 51:34 Speaker 2: Ms. DeSelm, can you hear us? You're on mute.

▶ 51:43 Speaker 2: I'm on mute. Yep. There we go. Right. There you go.

▶ 51:47 Speaker 9: You'd think I'd be a pro at this. Apologies.

▶ 51:53 Speaker 9: Right. Good evening City Councillors. First, I need to state that I am not here speaking to you on behalf of or for the school committee in part, or as a whole, I am here speaking on my own and for myself. As with many neighbors before me, I'm speaking tonight on behalf of the agenda item regarding Indigenous Peoples Day, nationally known as Columbus Day. While Christopher Columbus, or named after Christopher Columbus, we all learned the sing song in elementary school. In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. It's a perfectly benign song and one that covers up genocide, mass pillaging, a story of greed, lust, avarice, and a need to conquer and enslave Caribbean peoples, indigenous peoples, the Arawaks. My friends, as Churchill famously said history is written by the victors indeed by columbus's own words as soon as i

▶ 52:57 Speaker 9: arrived in the indies on the first island in which i found i took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever is in these parts boston university historian howard zen in his book in his book a people's history of the united states notes that the decline was brutal when it became he was here there for gold when it became clear that there was no gold left his words the indians were taken as slave labor on huge estates known later as encomiendas when their work they were worked at a furious pace and died by the thousands by the year 1515 there were perhaps 15 or 50 000 indians left by 1550 a mere 35 years later there were 500. a report of the year 1650 shows none of the original arrow acts or their

▶ 54:03 Speaker 9: descendants left on the island i don't know about you but it's the i believe that it's the job of thinking people to not to be on the side of executioners this from albert camus a famous philosopher what columbus did to the aroax of the bahamas cortez did to the aztecs of mexico pizarro did to the incas of peru english settlers of virginia and massachusetts to the power power I'm gonna butcher this name I'm so sorry ha ha tons and pick what's my friends

▶ 54:39 Speaker 9: as you've heard we're beginning to address the realities of Columbus in the classroom our teachers are working on this Melrose High School has changed their mascot from their logo I should say from the dream catcher to merely the circle with the M. There's still work to do, but within your power is to recognize Indigenous Peoples Day here in Melrose, and that's what I'm hoping you will do tonight. Thank you for your time.

▶ 55:18 Speaker 2: Thank you. Madam Clerk?

▶ 55:19 Speaker 1: That's all I have for my list. If there's anyone in the room that would still like to speak who has not, if you could raise your digital hand. I see Megan Rosenberg will try

▶ 55:42 Speaker 4: her again okay mr rosenberg hi can you hear me yes great i'm so sorry about the audio trouble

▶ 55:48 Speaker 4: thank you sure my name is megan rosenberg from 117 florence street in melrose um and i wanted to add my voice in support of indigenous people today and also add my perspective as an educator um as well as a parent of two small children um early in my teaching career i taught the history of columbus and the encounter with the indigenous people in the caribbean the students found it incredibly empowering to dig into primary sources like some of the ones that lizabeth mentioned to find out what truly happened but also confusing to learn that the hero that they had been taught to celebrate every year actually perpetrated incredible devastation to the communities he met including murder rape slavery and ultimately genocide two years after columbus established a base on haiti what is now haiti half of the 250 thousand Indians on the island were dead. I believe it is one of the measures of a great society that's willingness to improve and we know better now than we did when Columbus Day was established in 1792 and even when some of us were learning this history in school maybe just a few decades ago. We know enough now to separate the facts from the myth and are listening to the voices of the five million Native Americans in the U.S. when they tell us the trauma this national celebration causes. I would love to be able to tell my students and my kids my own children that we did exactly what the teachers asked them to do listen research learn revise and improve we can embrace what makes this country great which is the amazing diversity of its people and establish a new and better celebration of this land's original inhabitants that everyone can participate in together thank you for your time i appreciate

▶ 57:26 Speaker 1: it thank you anybody else everyone for my list mr shaman and no hands are up motion to close public

▶ 57:37 Christopher Cinella: Public comment made by counselor Stewart. What was the second? Showing hands, but seconded by Council McMaster and Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

▶ 57:45 Speaker 1: Chairman Sinella, Vice Chair Migliorelli? Yes. Councilor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes.