It's using the second Monday in October as a chance to raise awareness about the cultural contributions of the people who lived on this continent long before the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria crossed the Atlantic.

This decision might seem unusual, but it's actually part of a growing trend.

Over the past few years, a number of cities and states have stopped celebrating Columbus Day and started doing what Albuquerque is doing -- celebrating Indigenous People's Day [[http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/10/12/3711539/indigenous-peoples-day/]].

The reason they're doing this simple: more and more people are realizing that the traditional story of Christopher Columbus and his so-called "discovery" of the Americas is a lie.

First off, Columbus didn't actually discover the Americas, despite what you may have been taught in elementary school.

Hundreds of millions of Native peoples already called North and South America home when Columbus made landfall in the Caribbean islands, and thanks to archaeological evidence, we know now that many other groups - including Europeans - traveled to the Americas long before Columbus.

For example, back in the 10th century, the Vikings had settlements in what are now Greenland and Newfoundland.

And DNA evidence proves that Polynesians came to South America almost a century before Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

So, Columbus' "discovery" of the Americas wasn't really a discovery at all.

But enough about discovery -- let's talk about the man himself, and what he did to the indigenous peoples that he found when he arrived in the New World.

When Columbus set sail in 1492, he was on the hunt for gold to bring back to Europe, and eventually landed on an island known as Hispaniola, which today is the home of the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

Unfortunately, Columbus didn't discover much gold on Hispaniola, but he did find something as good as it, if not better: people.

And Columbus thought that these people would make great slaves.

When Columbus met the Taino natives of Hispaniola, he wrote back to the Spanish monarchs funding his voyage, saying that,

"They are well-built, with good bodies and handsome features...They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane...They would make fine servants...With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want. Here there are so many of these slaves...although they are living things they are as good as gold..."

Over time, Columbus' real actions in the Americas have been replaced by a warm-and-fuzzy coloring book story of a bold and brave explorer who set out to discover a new world.

But in reality, as we have learned from writings of Christopher Columbus' own men, the "bold explorer" raped, pillaged, enslaved and slaughtered people just to get rich.