(Since I'm feeling lazy, here's something I wrote about Columbus Day last year.)
Screw all this Columbus Day bullshit, I prefer to call today Indigenous Peoples' Day. Why? Because Columbus doesn't deserve a national fucking holiday, that's why.
I don't dislike Columbus Day simply because he 'discovered' land that was already inhabited (Hispaniola), I dislike it for the fact that he helped to literally wipe that land of its original inhabitants, the peaceful Arawaks, through his unbelievable cruelty and that of those who followed him to the New World.
What happened to these poor people was nothing short of genocide, and there's simply no justification for it. Stealing land and killing and/or enslaving its native inhabitants isn't OK, and it's certainly not something to celebrate with a national holiday.
And for all those who are unfamiliar with the real history behind Columbus Day, I suggest checking out this excerpt from Howard Zinn's Columbus and Western Civilization, as well as this clip from The Canary Effect.
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Yes, no two ways about it. The European takeover of the Western Hemisphere was outright genocide. Fortunately, some of the original peoples remain, especially in Latin America where in some places they still live in almost traditional ways. An excellent film (if you like historical films) about the Christianization of Mexico is The Other Conquest. That movie still haunts me and draws me back to view it again and again.
ReplyDeleteNow, what is there to do? Really, not much, I don't think. The tribes that run casinos and have learned Western ways to successfully extract a living from our 'system' seem to be prospering, but what is prosperity, really? I don't buy the American prosperity gospel any more than I buy the Christian version of it.
Back to the genocide, though the earliest Europeans, the Spaniards, committed these crimes, on the whole, European genocide of native peoples seems to range in a spectrum from Anglo Protestants (USA) where the natives were mostly exterminated or absorbed, Catholics (Canada, Latin America) where they were subjugated but not (usually) exterminated. Orthodox (Alaska) where they were abused by traders but rehab'd by missionaries and Christianity indigenized, with little genocide (at least to my knowledge). The Russians, for all their violence, seem to have learned how to manage indigenous people without exterminating them from their experience expanding across northern Asia.
Sorry for this lengthy bluster. Though there were heroic and Christian Europeans involved in the taking of the Americas (and I appreciate their efforts and intentions), I still regret that the land was taken at all. But here we are, the heirs of their acts both bad and good. For me the greater struggle and challenge is how to live with my brothers in peace and mutual respect (and even love) in the present, since the past is unchangeable.
By the way, missed seeing you turn up at the Greek Festival, but was watching for you, and thinking of you. Hope you are well.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Romanos. I agree that there's not much we can do about it now (the cat is out of the bag, as they say); but they could at least not celebrate one of the main architects of this genocide with a national holiday.
ReplyDelete(And I didn't make it to the Greek Festival this year because I'm still visiting my family in Michigan.)