As we sit in our backyards with friends having barbecues and line up on the streets to take part in Columbus Day parades, many others are spending the day protesting the holiday in recognition of their predecessors.
Many activists, both Native American and not, have spoken out on Twitter and other social media platforms regarding the importance of scrapping Columbus Day and renaming the holiday Indigenous Peoples Day. This is in an effort to honor the Native Americans who were murdered, pillaged and abused when Christopher Columbus settled in America in 1492.
For many of us, Columbus Day is one of those holidays that provides us with a long weekend. We tend not to pay attention to the reason why we have the day off, but rather celebrate the release from school, work and other responsibilities. This differs from the traditions on holidays such as Memorial Day and Independence Day — we recognize what these holidays are being celebrated for a legitimate reason, even though we may still use the days as excuses to get out of work or to celebrate with friends.
But the fact is, we don’t often think about what Columbus Day is really celebrating. We recall learning about Columbus Day in elementary school — we all know the nursery rhyme, “Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492.” We don’t come to know the extremes of Columbus’ colonialism until high school, and even then our history books paint the truth with broad strokes of bias that omit the brutal treatment of Native Americans during the colonization. According to Vox, “56 years after Columbus’ first voyage, only 500 of 300,000 Indians remained on Hispaniola.” In reality, we are sitting here celebrating genocide.
However, eight cities throughout the United States who represent the largest populations of Native Americans in the country have already deemed the second Monday in October as “Indigenous Peoples Day.” Cities such as Albuquerque, New Mexico; Olympia, Washington, and St. Paul, Minnesota, still celebrate the holiday with a day off from work and school, but they do so in celebration of those who deserve to be celebrated, rather than the mass-murdering fiend that Columbus was.
And while #ColumbusDay was trending on Twitter Monday, most of the tweets expressed anger regarding the celebration of the event, and urged people to celebrate for the right reasons. One tweet read, “I assume a #ColumbusDay sale means I can walk into a store and steal anything I want.” Others told their followers to go into strangers’ homes, claim their belongings and murder them in honor of the holiday.
The whole concept of “finding America” is really quite foolish. Even if Columbus had not settled in America, there would still be people here — those people just wouldn’t be as white. In reality, we are celebrating colonialism, not discovery. We as a country have a horrible habit of praising singular men for their accomplishments (or in this case, mass destruction of an entire people), even when others were involved. Who is to say that we should celebrate one man for his discovery of America? It certainly seems ridiculous to consider the celebration in this way. And even as we, a team of college newspaper editors, sit in a room and discuss Columbus Day, we find that we can’t honestly claim to know anything about the lives of Native Americans in the United States back then, and even less so in the present.
Even in Boston we see these trends continuing. Of course, Boston is a place of pride and heritage. East Boston hosts a parade celebrating the holiday every year in recognition of Boston’s Italian heritage and Columbus’ expedition. And this movement isn’t to say that we shouldn’t celebrate our heritages, but rather that we should be conscious and considerate of what we are celebrating.
We tend to have a selective forgetting process when it comes to which details about these horrific, historical experiences fall by the wayside. That being said, reclaiming the holiday sort of twists the reason for celebration 180 degrees, and gives those who still want a day off a chance to celebrate something that is actually important and necessary. The turn is truly vital not only to cities that harbor a large native population, but to all states.
This call to action has taught us not only to pay close attention to what we are celebrating, but also to pay close attention to our heritages. In fact, we have a responsibility to ourselves to remain skeptical of our histories, even while still remaining true to our pasts and to ourselves. We must consider our national heritage and what certain aspects of it actually mean.
#ColumbusDay, while still promoting “Columbus,” has brought to our attention some of the horrific and brutal activities the man was responsible for. We see tweet after tweet and article after article speaking out against his colonization. We have broadened our horizons. And while changing the name of the holiday won’t absolve all of the horrible things Columbus and our other predecessors have done to Native Americans in this country, we can hope that this change will at least influence the curriculum in schools and bring attention to what truly matters.
If indeed you truly believe what you’re saying, and you certainly make a convincing argument, then instead of writing an ultimately useless article or tweet, take action. Native Americans don’t want your mere lip service they want their nation back. So live up to your writing and do right by Native Nations, set a noble example and leave their country.
But my guess is you’ll come up with some laundry list of excuses not to take useful action and you’ll be no better than Columbus himself… Content to occupy their nation, plunder their resources, ignore the fact that you too are an invader on their land, and placate them with your hot air (which makes you feel better but does little or nothing for them). Hypocrite.