Title
AN ORDINANCE changing Indigenous Peoples' Day, a paid holiday for King County employees eligible for comprehensive leave benefits, from October 12 of each year to the second Monday in October of each year; and amending Ordinance 12014, Section 23, as amended, and K.C.C. 3.12.230.
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STATEMENT OF FACTS:
1. Popular sentiment is emerging for more formal acknowledgement and celebration of populations long resident in the region that have been historically ignored or suppressed.
2. The land that became the United States has been home for tens of thousands of years to indigenous communities, who built lifeways deeply tied to the land.
3. Over time, those communities developed ways of knowing, ways of being, ways of remembering, ways of praise and reverence, that were profoundly altered by European colonization starting in the seventeenth century.
4. The affirmation of these communities, and the remembrance of those ways contributes greatly to the ancient regional narrative and the store of human understanding and honors their continued contribution to the culture of the United States and King County.
5. In the 2020 US Census, approximately 60,000 people in King County identified as American Indian/Alaskan Native alone or in combination with one or more other race categories.
6. King County is situated on the historic lands of the Coast Salish peoples.
7. In November 2020, Ordinance 19208 stated that October 12 each year provides an opportunity for celebration of Indigenous Peoples' Day and established this date as an observed holiday for employees of King County.
8. Ordinance 19208 required that the office of equity and social justice consult with county employees who identify as Native American and with tribes located within King County on whether October 12 is the preferred date to designate the Indigenous Peoples' Day holiday with pay.
9. Ordinance 19208 also required that, after consulting with those employees and tribes located within King County...

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