American schoolchildren learn at an early age that their country was supposedly founded on the righteous tenets of grace and friendship. The English colonists made good with the Natives, shared crops and medicine, feasted together, and Columbus and company totally didn’t massacre everyone.
Many Americans will live their lives in total ignorance of the Native’s struggle, simply because they were not prompted to inquire further, or even felt bothered to.The systems embedded then that were exclusively for white man’s advantage are still very much in working order now, so what’s the point, right? The barbaric acts of violence committed then only secured the encompassing privilege inherent in America’s system today, so why tell the truth? Why betray the fantasy that only those with a fair complexion are entitled to humanity? Why let anyone believe, even for a moment, that credit should be given where it is deserved instead of where it is convenient? Right, because if the truth were to be ingrained into children’s minds in place of the blatant, awful barrage of lies, there would be generational affluence instead of generational bigotry. We might raise more intellectual activists, actual game-changers, young people with real purpose- instead of haughty politicians with bad hair. The systems of power that confound traditional aspects of honesty and virtue would no longer benefit the rich and white and weakly fall to flames, restoring order and truth. God forbid.
After all, this nation was founded on the Immense Brainpower of ye who were disturbingly stagnant in the belief that oral and bodily hygiene was optional, who bore rotten wooden teeth and parasitical powder wigs. (cough cough, colonial Europe) The whitewashing of this nation’s history serves no benefit or moral decency whatsoever, but is instead painful and horrifying erasure of a past that deserves some truth. Tribal children might return from school, beaming in pride that after learning that their part in America’s past was so deceptively positive, and evoking a pang of guilt from a parent who can’t muster the words to tell them what actually went down. Columbus Day stands as a disturbing reminder to indigenous people everywhere that the collective anguish the Tribal Nations have suffered since the colonial era remains brutally clear now, because the mere idea of a day in history federally devoted to the man responsible for eradicating a nation is beyond disconcerting. The fact that it’s still entrenched in history and calendars all over the country should tell you enough about America. There has been a growing effort to diminish this bogus holiday in lieu of a valid and highly substantiated one- National Indigenous People’s Day. Instead of remembering the deluded chauvinist that didn’t actually even discover America (there’s proof that the Vikings i.e. Leif Erikson visited even centuries before the English were) National Indigenous People’s Day lives to honor those who gave not only their land, but their lives for white America to be born.
National Indigenous People’s Day stands to rightfully commemorate the O.G. citizens of this land, the millions of Natives that were robbed of their natural sacrament in order for the America we know now to happen. National Indigenous Day would replace Columbus Day, and act as a day of widespread awareness and respect to those that actually built our nation, sans the mass pillaging, rape, theft, and deceit. Native Americans tended to the fields the white man ate from, mothered the children they would later enslave, and treated the pilgrims with overall generosity and hospitality, which was returned with murder and hostility. And despite everything, they have prevailed as a peaceful people, as well as an integral component of culture and history. The Tribal Nations loved this land in ways the colonizers could never even try to fathom, and they should be honored as such.
Native Americans will feel the repercussions of Anglo Saxon terror for centuries, millennia, forever. Today, a limited number of tribes receive reparations in recognition and federal funding, but money will never reverse the damage done. And yet, thousands more stand perpetually silenced because although they are legitimate tribes, the government somehow doesn’t deem them worthy of acknowledgement. The increasingly alarming numbers of indigenous Americans that have gone missing or even killed in hate crimes- the recent case of pregnant tribe mother Sarah Lee Circle Bear’s inexplicable death while in police custody serves as a prime example- proves that Natives continue to sacrifice for the ground we stand on today, thousands of years later. And what no one wants to realize is; Native. Americans. Are. Still. Suffering.
A national holiday in their honor is barely a conscious nod in their direction compared to the endless agony they’ve endured, but it’s more than what they have received yet, and would help spread necessary awareness in the name of the Natives. We can no longer hopelessly comply with the gross injustice, racism and inaction enacted before us as a nation, a global epidemic striking even heavier and more frequently in recent times in light of the Black Lives Matter movement, the Israel/Palestine conflict, the Syrian refugee crisis, and the so-called immigration conflict in the U.S. (i.e. institutionalized racism), etc. Movement is mandatory for change, and it starts now. Shout for those not equipped with the volume to; America’s cowardice ends when we realize that history, just like the Constitution, cannot define us in 2015. The Confederate Flag has fallen, and so will Columbus’ bullshit legacy. Already established in several states, National Indigenous People’s Day is for the recognized and unrecognized, the killed and the missing, the mourning and the grieved-for. And while National Indigenous People’s Day cannot possibly make up for years of oppression and discrimination, it’s decidedly a start.
