As Philadelphia prepares to celebrate its third Indigenous Peoples Day, several monuments, statues, and commemorations of explorer Christopher Columbus remain throughout the city. Despite a recent national movement to remove or recast them, the U.S. still had at least 149 monuments honoring the Italian explorer, per a 2021 audit from local art and history studio Monument Lab. 

It’s a subject of intense debate, in Philly and elsewhere, as Columbus is held by some Italian Americans as a symbol of cultural pride, and seen by others as representative of the genocide and violent human rights abuses perpetrated against Indigenous peoples in the Americas.