It is more or less agreed – despite constant whining of American Indians – in genetic and anthropological circles that the ancestors of the people existing in the Americas when Columbus landed wherever he landed (some debate about the specifics of that apparently), had themselves journeyed from East Asia during a time when the sea levels were so low that a land bridge formed between Siberia and Canada/Alaska for thousands of years. E.g., https://www.history.com/news/native-americans-hailed-from-siberian-highlands-dna-reveals; https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/first-americans-lived-on-bering-land-bridge-for-thousands-of-years/; https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/science/prehistoric-migration-americas.html.
“Indigenous” means “naturally existing in a place or country rather than arriving from another place”. E.g., https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/indigenous.
So all these claims of American Indians that they are “indigenous” or “native” to the Americas to the exclusion of the rest of us is just nonsense. These people came over the Siberian land bridge from someplace else just like the rest of us, just earlier; they are no more indigenous than you or us. And at this point, over 500 years later, Americans of white European ancestry have just as much right to consider themselves native or indigenous to the Americas as American Indians. The fact they got here first doesn’t make them indigenous. They didn’t spring up out of nothing on the American continents; they came from someplace else. Maybe “Original Settlers Day” would be more accurate, and come to think of it, that would cover both perspectives.
This is not to say that the American Indians didn’t get a raw deal in the short or long-term, they certainly did. But let’s not puff up their earlier presence in the Americas into something it just isn’t. Anyway, this attempted renaming of a perfectly good celebration of the discovery of the Americas by white Europeans in favor of supposedly “indigenous” or “native” American Indians is completely baseless and should be ignored.
So, tomorrow, Happy Columbus Day, buona fortuna and enjoy the day!