Workers with the U.S. Postal Service and other federal employees will have a day off Monday, Oct. 11 in observance of Columbus Day, first recognized as a federal holiday during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937.
Because federal offices will be closed, so will most banks and the bond markets that trade in U.S. government debt.
The city of Perry does not officially observe either Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The state of Iowa observes Indigenous Peoples’ Day, but it is not a paid state holiday. All city offices will be open for business as usual.
U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday became the first U.S. president to offer a presidential proclamation for Indigenous Peoples’ Day. He also proclaimed Monday as Columbus Day.
“Today, we also acknowledge the painful history of wrongs and atrocities that many European explorers inflicted on Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities,” Biden said in his Columbus Day proclamation. “It is a measure of our greatness as a Nation that we do not seek to bury these shameful episodes of our past — that we face them honestly, we bring them to the light, and we do all we can to address them.”
