Columbus Day : Thanks but No Thanks

Mon09Oct2006

Columbus Day : Thanks but No Thanks

Some United States residents today have the day off from work and school in observance of Columbus Day. You all have heard the elementary school poem: In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue and.....well he actually didn't discover a thing (lands inhabitated by indigenous peoples don't need to be "discovered") and he didn't even actually set foot on North America proper. What he did set off was a cycle of violence that violated the land and human rights of Indigenous, Native and First Nation people across the Americas.

Don't buy what I'm selling? According an organization/coalition called Transform Columbus Day:

During Columbus' tenure as "viceroy and governor" of the Caribbean Islands and the American mainland from 1493 until 1500, he instituted policies of slavery (encomienda) and the systematic murder and rape of the Taino population. Dominican priest, Bartolome de Las Casas was the first European historian in the Americas. He was an eyewitness and wrote in painful detail of the tortures he witnessed. In a survey conducted in 1496, he estimated that over 5 million people had been exterminated within the first three years of the Columbus rule. [Actual survey conducted in 1496 by Bartolome de Las Casas, cited in J.B. Thatcher, Christopher Columbus, Vol. 2 [Source: New York: Putnam Sons Publishers, 1903-1904), p. 348ff. cited in Churchill.] Later accounts that gloss over the horrors of the Columbus regime are the revisions of history.

By the time of Columbus' departure, only 100,000 Taino were left, and by 1542, only 200 were left. Within the entire Caribbean Islands, about 15 million indigenous people are estimated to have been exterminated within one generation of Columbus' arrival. This is genocide, the wholesale killing of an entire race of people. These policies, established here, laid the foundation for extermination policies that Europeans used to justify the elimination of over 100 million native people throughout the Western Hemisphere. By any standards those numbers describe a Holocaust.

Here in NYC, some Italians and Italian-Americans use the day to celebrate their pride. As a woman of color, a Latina, a Rican descendent of Tainos and the mami to a Mapuche child, I ask, they couldn't pick someone with a better background to raise up as an example?

Many Native people across the country and the continents that span the Americas have reclaimed today as Indigenous People's Day, a day of rememberance. Some of my native friends will be fasting today.

So before you go to that great sale, or better yet instead of going to that great sale, take some time off today to learn about what really went down in 1492 and its continuing legacy today.

Via / Transform Colombus Day

Image Via / Class Brain

Celebrate Dominican Independence Day : SOB's Style (Wednesday, Feb 20 2008)
Latinos : Do You Do Dia del Amor y Amistad (Thursday, Feb 14 2008)

Maegan la Mala

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1. kelly ~ Monday, Oct 09 2006 | 09:38H:

The magazine Teaching Tolerance put out a CD/Book which contains a new version of a Columbus Day Song to teach kids. It starts like this
"In 1492
Columbus sailed the ocean blue
It was a courageous thing to do
But someone was already here." It goes on to talk about all of the people who were here at the time.

It is a good twist (more truthful) on the old poem. I haven't taught it to my students though. I have no extra time to for Columbus in the class with all of the other things I have to teach!

2. Maegan la Mala ~ Monday, Oct 09 2006 | 11:15H:

Actually Kelly, I've noticed that in many classrooms here in NYC the whole Columbus thing is not being taught, not out of radical politics but rather because of the focus on high stakes testing.

3. Brian ~ Thursday, Nov 02 2006 | 20:17H:

It seems that Columbus day is dying out fast. Give it another decade or two and teachers will only be talking about how teachers used to mislead children with the old story.

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