Happy Columbus Day Weekend! To anyone attending school in the United States, this might mean you have a three day weekend to celebrate Christopher Columbus. To anyone attending school in the United States that is of Native American heritage, this might mean you have a three day weekend to celebrate the genocide of your ancestors.
I, for one, loved Columbus Day when I was younger. We got to sing that song about the Nina, The Pinta, and The Santa Maria and take turns reading lines from that “In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue” poem in elementary school. We learned all about how Christopher Columbus discovered America and then about a month later, we learned about the First Thanksgiving, when half of us dressed up as Native Americans and the other half dressed up as Pilgrims. American schools tell Native American students that the genocide of their people does not matter-even denying it ever happened-while having the audacity to punish them when they refuse to stand for the pledge of allegiance.
Generally, as students get older they are taught more about Christopher Columbus and the atrocities he committed: the rape, the disease, the violence. The terminology used in classrooms begins to resemble the language used to discuss any other genocide discussed: The Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the Rwandan Genocide. But there is not (nor has there ever been) a holiday to celebrate oppressors in any of these genocides. So why is there one to celebrate Christopher Columbus? Is it because somehow the victims of the Native American Genocide are not worth as much as victims of other genocides? Is it because this genocide was not quite as severe as others? Of course not. It’s because, much like most other parts of America’s history, the discovery of it has been so severely whitewashed to sugarcoat the actions of a European man against people of color. A common excuse for Christopher Columbus and Columbus Day is that the Native American genocide happened soooo long ago, as if morals hadn’t been invented yet. The fact of the matter is, America does not care about Native Americans and it never has. The country has a long history of treating Native Americans as if they are somehow less American than the rest of the country (when it fact, they’re probably the most American). From the Trail of Tears, to forced assimilation programs, to the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline after multiple Native American protests to halt it.
While Columbus Day is still a federal holiday in the United States (managing to place Christopher Columbus in the same category as Martin Luther King Jr.), some cities across the country are refusing to continue the celebration of Christopher Columbus, instead opting to honor the Native Americans killed. Cities like Albuquerque, Portland, and Seattle have chosen to rename Columbus Day ‘Indigenous Peoples Day’ . So what’s taking the rest of the country so long to do the same? Good question.
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