Tiffany Antinori, 11, of Providence, was among the dancers on Sunday in the Columbus Day parade on Federal Hill. The Providence Journal / Connie Grosch

PROVIDENCE — A fresh stripe of red, white and green is painted bright along Federal Hill’s Atwells Avenue this weekend for the neighborhood’s annual Columbus Day Feast, the three-day festival that, for many, is the state’s quintessential celebration of Italian-American heritage.

But on the other side of town, the holiday is being observed in an altogether different way.

This past week, Brown University student groups sponsored “Roots Week,” a series of panel discussions, film screenings and performances on the consequences to Native Americans of Christopher Columbus’ transatlantic voyage in 1492.

On Monday, students will enjoy the culmination of their first “Fall Weekend” since the university decided to drop the Columbus Day holiday at the request of the Native Americans at Brown, a student group.

The Brown College Republicans, another student group, has promised to stage a “Pro-Columbus” rally on the campus green on Monday.

The markedly different ways in which the two sides of the city are acknowledging Oct.12, the date Columbus landed on the island of Hispaniola, highlight the continuing debate about the Genoese explorer’s legacy.

Today, Columbus is generally credited with stirring European awareness to the existence of the Americas, but also as the man responsible for initiating an era of massive European colonization that eventually pushed Native Americans to the brink of extinction. “We must look at him in a more complex, nuanced way,” says Brown University Professor Nicolas Wey-Gomez, who was involved in the holiday name change. “The events of 1492 –– whether you choose to celebrate or to mourn them –– are of enormous consequence.”

BROWN’S DECISION to strike the Columbus Day holiday from its academic calendar followed a nearly yearlong debate on campus, and it placed the university among a growing list of American colleges, cities and states that have changed the name of the federally recognized holiday.

Reiko Koyama, now a junior at Brown, first approached the university’s Native American student group to take on the Columbus Day issue last September.

A public policy major who is of Japanese and German-Irish descent, Koyama said that Native American social-justice issues had been ubiquitous in her native Minnesota, and found the Columbus Day observance particularly offensive.

“It’s not right,” she said. “I came to Brown because of its commitment to diversity. … And yet the Columbus Day holiday condones the atrocities at the hands of Columbus and his men.”

Koyama and the Native Americans at Brown held a rally on campus early that semester and generated a petition signed by about 800 students. They requested that the university simply push the three-day weekend to another date.

But moving the holiday presented “logistical” issues that faculty and staff were not comfortable with. “Basically parents would have to find a way to take care of their kids, who might have had the day off, while they worked,” said Koyama.

Columbus Day 2008 came and went without the change the students hoped for, but the Native American students and Koyama persisted. They changed strategy, though, asking the university to consider dropping the Columbus Day moniker instead.

They argued their case, one university board at a time. In the spring, the university newspaper polled students and found that a majority –– over 80 percent –– favored that proposal, said Koyama.

The students weighed a number of names, including Tomato Day (the Native Americans introduced tomatoes to Europeans), International Cultural Exchange Day, and Heritage Day. Ultimately, they settled on the benign Fall Weekend.

THE BACKLASH outside campus was fierce after university faculty formally adopted the name change in April, recalls Dana Eldridge, a Navajo from Arizona and member of Native Americans at Brown.

Prominent local politicians, including Mayor David N. Cicilline, a Brown alum, derided the move as offensive to Italian-Americans. Some saw it as another example of how the university was out of sync with the values of the city around it.

Local and national media saw it, at best, as an attempt at “political correctness” and, at worse, an attack on American values.

“It was disheartening and a little bit hard to deal with,” said Eldridge, who is now a senior. She says the purpose of the name change was never to prevent others from celebrating Columbus’ accomplishments or to disrespect Italians or attack American values.

“For me, [the response] showed how important this issue is. People still have these ingrained notions of how backward Native Americans were when Columbus arrived and about what we’re like today.”

Professor Wey-Gomez said that the faculty listened carefully to the students’ arguments and considered local sentiment toward Columbus before making its decision.

Wey-Gomez, who published last year’s The Tropics of Empire: Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies, said that our better understanding today of Columbus’ exploration “demand that we take greater stock of what he means and what were the consequences of his actions.”

Columbus represents the paradigm of the “great explorer, the great navigator,” a person who challenged the scientific notions of the time and created a bridge between European and American cultures, he said.

But people should also be reminded that he introduced slavery in the Caribbean and that there was a record of abuses from the men under his command that “cannot be contested,” said Wey-Gomez.

ON FEDERAL HILL, which was once the center of Italian immigration to the city, Columbus still stands as the paragon of Italian heroism, and his day remains one of great cultural pride.

During the three-day weekend, the many restaurants that line Atwells Avenue open their doors to al-fresco dining in the street as the thoroughfare is closed off to cars. Shops set up outdoor displays, and there are two stages for musical acts and carnival rides for kids. Sunday, a nearly two-hour-long parade brought out Italian politicians from the Providence metro area, the Sons of Italy, and the Italian American Club of Providence.

“It’s like a reunion. We try and bring back the people who lived on the Hill and their families so that the younger generation knows their heritage,” said Joseph DeGiulio, a longtime shop owner on Atwells Avenue (his Joe’s Acorn Market closed in 2002) who has been coordinating the Columbus Day parade for a decade.

But Federal Hill Commerce Association President Michelle Ahlborg, who is also helping with Columbus Day festivities, says businesses have no interest in weighing in on the Columbus debate.

“Columbus Day is a holiday. We can’t change that. But we’re not celebrating Columbus, we’re not hanging Italian flags,” said Ahlborg. “We’re celebrating because it’s a three-day weekend in October. It is a beautiful time of the year to show off our galleries, boutiques and restaurants.”

She says this year’s festival will also reflect the neighborhood’s changing character. “It’ll be less sausage and peppers,” Ahlborg said, referring to the traditional Italian staple that is a fixture at Columbus Day feasts. “Federal Hill is a melting pot. Atwells Avenue is a quarter-mile of eclectic food. We have everything under the sun.”

To this, DeGiulio says he must “respectfully disagree.”

For him and many other Italian-Americans, Columbus Day will remain the high celebration of Italian culture, their version of St. Patrick’s Day or Cinco de Mayo.

“It’s about our Italian-American heritage that we’re so proud of and that Columbus was a part of as a Genoese sailor. He did one of the biggest things in the history of mankind in opening up the Western Hemisphere to the rest of the world.”

pmarcelo@projo.com