Today is a federal holiday for some, but not all. Originally known only as Columbus Day, it also marks Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
Indigenous Peoples’ Day, as officially recognized formally for the first time under the Biden Administration in 2021, describes today as a time to celebrate the invaluable contributions and resilience of Indigenous peoples and recognize their inherent sovereignty.
For Texas, today marks an unpaid “legal holiday,” “public holiday” or “day of recognition,” according to the Pew Research Center.
The Nuestro Oak Cliff documentary states in a land acknowledgement that what is now present day Oak Cliff was once the Indigenous Land of the Kickapoo, Jumanos, Tawakoni, Comanche, Caddo and Wichita.
The Trinity River that runs along the northern border of the neighborhood was also previously known as the Arkikosa River.
“The Caddos called it Arkikosa for a reason. They weren’t the only ones to call it that. They got the name from somewhere,” Diana Parton said in an article for Spectrum 1 News. As of 2021, Parton was researching to find out whether the name was an actual Caddo word or a word from another tribe.
According to an article by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Arkikosa was likely a corruption or misspelling of the word Akokisa which means “river people” for the Atakapa tribe.
