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Our culture relies heavily on history.
It informs us, it gives us meaning and it provides us with the context behind our entire nation and its institutions. It’s taught in schools. This can be good or it can be bad. In the case of Christopher Columbus, history has often favored whitewashing his contributions as just that, contributions. The association or connotation is positive. In the end, the meaning behind Columbus Day is one that is patently negative, a holiday based on a white man claiming he discovered something that actually didn’t in fact belong to him and that had prospered for thousands of years before him.
Christopher Columbus was responsible for the rape, murder, torture and genocide of millions of people, the catalyst for attacks on Native Americans that continue to this day with political structures, cultural setbacks and continued encroachment on Native territory. His legacy and his history live on long beyond his death, taught in schools as nothing more than a fun discovery with the help of the Santa Maria and his loyal crew.
Imagine having to celebrate a government-sanctioned holiday imposed by a society that has shamed and pillaged your people in celebration of the man who started it all.
It’s often said that to abolish Columbus Day from our calendars would be to erase him and to ignore his wrongdoings, but that’s not true. To celebrate Christopher Columbus’ ideals is to perpetuate them and to give him an unnecessary spotlight, whereas to leave him as a cautionary tale and an unfortunate, unbiased, truthful historical chapter in the book of our nation is to learn from his mistakes.
Indigenous Peoples’ Day seeks to right Christopher Columbus’ wrongs. Its purpose is more important now than ever.
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Native Americans make up a little over three million people or a bit over 1% of the nation’s population, according to a 2008 census. This means that their population has exponentially decreased over the years. This is, in part, due to the physical attacks on their numbers by colonialists, but it’s also due to the cultural and social implications of their existence. Many Native Americans live in poverty, their land depleting annually in large numbers due to government initiatives like the Dakota Access Pipeline.
The unemployment rates are high in the population. According to Wikkipedia, the unemployment rate on the Blackfoot Reservation in Montana has been 69%.
This is in comparison to the American national unemployment rate of 6.7% as of 4 April 2014,[12] or even during the worst part of the Great Depression at 25%.[13] According to the 2000 Census, Indians living in Indian country have incomes that are less than half of the general U.S. population.[14] The US Census reports that the median income of households based on a three-year average from 2003-2005 was $33,627
Native Americans also withstand several health conditions that have plagued the population for decades. Alcoholism, drug use and diabetes are just a few examples of the most common ailments on reservations, in part due to the quality of life that accompanies poverty, including insurance disputes and lack of accessibility, and living on government-sanctioned land in an endangered culture.
All of this comes in the wake of an election that touted a motto of making America great AGAIN, when for millions of people, it was only great before white men infiltrated their land.
Luckily, some cities and states are taking note of this hypocrisy.
Minnesota, Alaska and Vermont all celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead of Columbus Day, while South Dakota celebrates Native American Day. Los Angeles, Seattle, Minneapolis, Denver, Phoenix and Austin also made the change.
Our country should follow suit, putting ourselves on the right side of history.
