Good news from USA Today, of all places: “Support grows for Indigenous Peoples Day amid Columbus Day criticism.”
Perhaps as for many of you, it was Howard Zinn’s wonderful and essential A People’s History of the United States that opened my eyes to the atrocities committed by Columbus and his sailors. From the relevant chapter:
They went from island to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives. But as word spread of the Europeans’ intent they found more and more empty villages. On Haiti, they found that the sailors left behind at Fort Navidad had been killed in a battle with the Indians, after they had roamed the island in gangs looking for gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor.
Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route.
In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.
The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.
Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.
When it became clear that there was no gold left, the Indians were taken as slave labor on huge estates, known later as encomiendas. They were worked at a ferocious pace, and died by the thousands. By the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550, there were five hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island….
Las Casas tells how the Spaniards “grew more conceited every day” and after a while refused to walk any distance. They “rode the backs of Indians if they were in a hurry” or were carried on hammocks by Indians running in relays. “In this case they also had Indians carry large leaves to shade them from the sun and others to fan them with goose wings.”
Total control led to total cruelty. The Spaniards “thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades.” Las Casas tells how “two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys.”
So…although wishing someone a “happy” Indigenous Peoples Day may seem incongruous after reading all that, IPD is a necessary corrective, and acknowledging it is a small act of social justice. So happy Indigenous Peoples Day to everyone!
Napoleon
Huh? That is not the name of that island, and the country did not exist at that time.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Why do we even have a fucking Columbus Day any longer? We might as well have a Hitler Day, too, along with Stalin Day, if Columbus is the standard here.
Mnemosyne
The combination of gold lust and indigenous populations was usually disastrous for those indigenous populations. Here in California, many native peoples survived the Spanish missions, only to be massacred by gold-seekers after the Gold Rush began.
So, yep, we can’t even blame the virtual destruction of California’s native peoples on the Spanish. It was mostly Americans who did it.
bluefish
Indeed! Thank you for this. Powerful painting.
Mnemosyne
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
This is where things get interesting: Columbus was a figure of pride for Italian-Americans, and a route to their gaining acceptance as “real Americans.” My aunts, now in their 60s and 70s, still remember being called “wops” and “dagoes” in the Chicago suburbs into the 1950s, so it was a pretty big deal.
This is why the Roman Catholic men’s group the Knights of Columbus were named that. It’s primarily an Italian-American pride group, and they’re kinda pissed that they have to let go of their hero.
Hillary Rettig
@Napoleon: Hispaniola?
Hillary Rettig
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): nicely put!
Hillary Rettig
PS – punctuation wonks! where do we stand on People’s vs. People, in this case. I went nuts with this – the USAT article is pro apostrophe but cites other articles that are anti.
Mnemosyne
@Napoleon:
I haven’t read the book in a while, but IIRC there’s a bit several paragraphs back where he says something like, Hispaniola, now know as Haiti … That’s still not 100 percent correct since the Dominican Republic comprises the other half of the island, but it’s sufficient for popular history.
Hillary Rettig
@Mnemosyne: I know it’s hard to let stuff go. but c’mon! Italy’s got more than its share of cool people to name days after.
#davinciday
#michelangeloday
#danteday
#thepersonwhoinventedpizzaday
etc.
…
schrodinger's cat
The day Columbus landed was certainly not a happy day for the indigenous people. I appreciate the sentiment but I don’t see what the renaming achieves.
Patricia Kayden
@Mnemosyne: Italians can worship at the altar of Columbus all they want. They shouldn’t expect other people to do so — especially those who are descendants of peoples harmed by Columbus and his fellow genocidal maniacs.
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Great question. It should have been changed decades ago. There is nothing honorable about a man who rampaged and destroyed so many peoples.
Mnemosyne
@Hillary Rettig:
Right, but none of them “discovered” the Americas, so they don’t have any direct connection to immigration.
Personally, I don’t think Amerigo Vespucci gets enough credit, but maybe people are embarrassed that they misspelled his name when they named the two continents after him.
schrodinger's cat
NYT has been pretty awful this election season, the day after the second debate was no exception. Another fail, by the paper of record.
Nelle
My neighbors have not wanted to register to vote. The US government is the government of oppression (they are Native American)and they don’t want much to do with it. But they are reconsidering and I will celebrate the day by going over with voter registration forms to see if they will register. Since this is Kobach’s Kansas, they have to prove that they were born in the United States. At least they can do that with their tribal affiliation cards.
Patricia Kayden
@schrodinger’s cat: Good point. Perhaps “Indigenous Remembrance Day” or something to that effect to reflect on the tragedy Columbus and his ilk brought to Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas.
Villago Delenda Est
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone north of the border in that civilized country up there!
Baud
@schrodinger’s cat: I like the meme.
Mnemosyne
@Patricia Kayden:
Italians in Italy don’t care much about Columbus. It’s all about the politics of immigration and Italian-American immigrants trying to gain acceptance from the American WASP majority. That’s why the fight gets weirdly ugly — it’s actually a fight between two minority groups to see whose view of history will win out.
ETA: For the record, I think an Indigenous People’s Day is vastly better than continuing to celebrate Columbus for his crimes. I just think people need to understand that it’s a formerly oppressed minority ethnic group that’s upset about the change.
Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again)
All of those paragraphs and not one mention of disease?
Why were Columbus and his men apparently so hungry for gold when they were sent to find a trade route to India and Indonesia, where they’d pick up spices?
And who was it that wrote the original documents upon which Zinn’s work here is ultimately based? Were they witnesses? Were they enemies? Were they people who were looking to raise their own profiles by destroying those of others, as the Tudors did around the same time in regards to Richard III?
There are good reasons that historians rate Zinn and his “A People’s History…” rather low.
Hillary Rettig
@Mnemosyne: well there’s that. otoh, we do live in a global world and so perhaps that’s less important, or will become less important.
#giottoday
#botticelliday
#fermiday <-this would get my vote, he was totally a badass (and an immigrant genius who fought fascism AND a physicist like my hubby. plus the word works)
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: Mr. Suzanne and I are both of Italian descent (our Italian families settled in the Brooklyn area before moving out), and I know that lots of Italian-Americans think of Columbus Day as “Italian-American Pride Day”, which is something I’m sympathetic toward…..but not as sympathetic as I am to the Native populations of this continent who suffered horribly. We have made plenty of contributions to American and world culture, and I think it’s fine if we take a different day to celebrate them. We don’t need to be wrapped up with Cristobal Colon to be proud Americans, IMHO.
Hillary Rettig
@Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again): these would be good points if I had reproduced the entire chapter and not an excerpt.
Mnemosyne
@Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again):
Not to bring all of the Ricardians back out, but there’s a reason most of their complaints about “Tudor propaganda” date back to before the discovery of contemporary reports in Italian archives that noted that the princes mysteriously vanished from public view and were never seen again. The person who had opportunity, access, and motive to kill them was Richard III. All of the other suspects require some kind of distortion of the existing record to be as plausible.
Greenergood
Don’t call it Happy Indigenous Peoples Day – call it Honor Indigenous Peoples Day
Quicksand
Meanwhile, the good ol’ WaPo has The war against Columbus Day. And it’s in the Post Nation “news” section!
With a headline like that you KNOW the comments section’s gonna be LIT.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
Again, I agree with you. I’m just pointing out the reason why Columbus Day became a holiday in the first place and why getting rid of it is so contentious for some people. It’s not just a general “white people suck” thing, it’s an ethnic pride situation that I think a lot of people don’t understand the roots of.
singfoom
@Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again):
That’s from the website for a PHOTUS: http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html
Sure, Zinn’s book has problems. As do most histories. It’s almost as if a person should read both his book and other “standard” history books and come to their own conclusions by using critical thinking.
singfoom
@Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again):
That’s from the Online version of PHOTUS
Sure, Zinn’s book has problems. As do most histories. It’s almost as if a person should read both his book and other “standard” history books and come to their own conclusions by using critical thinking. It doesn’t mean that PHOTUS doesn’t have valid critiques of the standard approach to US history.
cokane
While I do think Columbus was especially vicious, even among conquistadors, it was a radically different time with radically different mores. And these different mores were not peculiar to Columbus nor to Europeans. Pre-colombian Americans have a history as rich in slavery, conquest and rape and it’s no different than what one finds looking at Eastern Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, or any other part of the world.
No one deserved to be conquered, but conquest was the assumed norm for pretty much all humanity, until very very recently. History is an endless and cheaply mined vein for those seeking moral sanctimony.
? Martin
You know, the whole genocide thing wouldn’t have happened if they had the 2nd Amendment. #MAGA #pepeismycopilot
Hillary Rettig
@Greenergood: verbs are indeed good!
Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again)
@Hillary Rettig:
No need to paste the entire chapter, because you’ve pasted the meat of his narrative. You aren’t the only person who read the book.
I hope you’re not buying Zinn’s hypothesis that the Japanese were trying to surrender when Hiroshima was bombed. There’s absolutely no proof for that anywhere, not even in the Soviet’s files (and they would have used such information to tear the US apart had they such evidence). That rumor still goes around as if it was true, though it was edited out of “A People’s History…” after the first or second edition.
Chris
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Columbus Day: How Is This Still A Thing?
Hillary Rettig
@? Martin: win.
Hillary Rettig
I have to sign off now – Billy D. Dawg demanding – yes, DEMANDING – to be fed and walked.
Mnemosyne and others – what do you all think of Enrico Fermi Day as an Italian Pride Day substitute?
Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck
Has anyone mentioned Columbus’s shipping natives back to England as slaves, and his instructing his men that nine year old girls were preferable?
@cokane:
Every branch of humanity definitely has its horrible crimes, but a national holiday celebrating one of the most ghastly examples is not a good thing.
schrodinger's cat
@cokane: European colonial powers did it on a scale much larger than those before them.
Baud
@cokane:
Along those lines, while it’s important to understand how the introduction of new diseases devastated the native population, I can’t really “blame” the Europeans for that, given the state of medical knowledge at the time.
schrodinger's cat
@Baud: What about the English general, Jeffrey Amherst who gave smallpox infected blankets to native Americans?
burnspbesq
Zinn wrote one outstanding book. A People’s History is not it.
Baud
@Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck: Agree. If we were doing this from scratch, we wouldn’t choose a day for Columbus IMHO.
Baud
@schrodinger’s cat: Yeah, that’s different. I didn’t think most of the disease transmission was deliberate, however.
Hilfy
Who painted that picture in this post? The pic covers up the subscript at the bottom of the post. It appears to be domesticated dogs,one mountain lion and an unidentifiable animal killing men, while Europeans look on. Worth knowing its provenance.
Cacti
Happy Canadian Thanksgiving Day!
omnes omnibis
@Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck:
England?
cokane
@schrodinger’s cat: only because they had the tools to do so. The Incas would have been just as awful conquerors, for one example, had they Guns, Germs and Steel.
I also don’t quite agree with you. Arabs arguably had an equivalent sized conquest, Mongols before them, Chinese before them. We just know about our own home-grown terrorists best
Roger Moore
@Patricia Kayden:
It would also be good to come up with a better word than “celebrate” to describe the thing we do on somber occasions. “Commemorate” is good for some occasions, but it isn’t quite right for all of them. Any suggestions?
Hal
Alex Jones just ruined Hillary’s chances of becoming president
cokane
@Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck: meh, Muslims celebrate Muhammad, we also celebrate Washington and Jefferson. Columbus day is less about the man, and more about noting an important historical event. That Columbus was awful, is pretty common knowledge, frankly.
Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again)
@burnspbesq:
Something on LaGuardia, right?
Mnemosyne
@schrodinger’s cat:
Frankly, the vast majority of the disease damage was done well before the British showed up on American shores, which is why the colonists at Plymouth and other places didn’t experience the same resistance from the indigenous population as the Spanish did. Squanto was able to assist the Pilgrims because he returned home and discovered that his village had died of disease before the English even made landfall.
And while they knew that something was up with smallpox, the germ theory of disease had not been postulated yet. Doctors were still bleeding and purging people to balance their humours.
schrodinger's cat
@cokane: I am not talking about the area, I am talking about the # of people that died because of their conquests, directly and indirectly.
LibraryGuy
I get that there are documented problems with Zinn’s book, but the motivation and force behind it did help spark a genuine interest in the public that read it in questioning what really happened in colonizing the Americas. I recommend two other books, Lies My Teacher Told Me (about textbooks) and Lies Across America (about historical sites) that give some good general interest material to whet your historical appetite.
schrodinger's cat
@Baud: He was quite the hero in Americas, Lord Amherst. There are more than a dozen places named after him in both Canada and the United States.
hueyplong
@Hal: That’s pretty funny.
I’d like to see a Venn diagram of Alex Jones fans and people who are on the edge of their seats awaiting the outcome of professional wrestling matches.
SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch
@Napoleon:
According to Wikipedia, Haiti was the Taino (aboriginal) name for the island we call Hispaniola.
Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again)
@singfoom:
The problem here is that las Casas is the only person to have transcribed Columbus’ journal, and las Casas can be considered the first activist for Amerindian rights.
Don’t take any of this as me trying to make a saint of Columbus, but there’s far, far, far too much blame put on him for the disappearance of Amerindians while the biggest factor in that disappearance was disease.
Suzanne
@Hillary Rettig: I would actually love to have a day celebrating the arts. In part to celebrate Italian contributions to the arts, which I think most people can agree are hugely significant, but also because I cannot get anyone to name a Renaissance artist who isn’t a Ninja Turtle. Even my mother’s father, who hated Italians (my dad is the paisano), knew that Italian painting, architecture, and design was really some of the best in the world and hugely foundational to western culture.
Artemisia Gentileschi FTW.
Mnemosyne
@schrodinger’s cat:
At least according to Wikipedia, I should have said germ theory in the West. Doctors in India figured out smallpox vaccinations long before Jenner did (though he did figure out the cowpox connection that made for safer vaccinations).
cokane
@schrodinger’s cat: Nor was I, while I do think the genocide of native americans COULD be the worst genocide in history, I’m not 100% that it is. Arab slave trade of Africans both preceded and succeeded the European trade and Arab/Turkish conquest spread from India to West Africa — not peacefully. It’s probably impossible to crunch these numbers, but they could be on par with American genocide.
But it’s also not important, imo. I don’t understand the logic of teasing out which civilization was the greater evil in the past.
Roger Moore
@cokane:
The reason it’s still contentious today is because Native Americans are still getting screwed over by whites 500+ years later. Columbus was just the first in a very long string of grievances, and a holiday celebrating him provides a convenient occasion to raise those grievances.
Baud
@cokane: It’s a internet myth, maybe based in fact, that the Mongol invasions was the biggest killer of people. Literally decimated the world’s population.
Patricia Kayden
@Cacti: Yes. That’s a nice way to celebrate the second Monday in October. Canadians don’t celebrate Columbus Day despite having a rather large Italian-Canadian population.
Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again)
@srv:
And how about motherfuckin’ Mongolia, huh? The gall…
And while we’re passing out shame and blame, if the Turks hadn’t blocked the trade routes with India and the Far East, the Portugese and Spanish wouldn’t have had to go looking for new trade routes…And Columbus wouldn’t have been so totally bogus to Crazy Horse!
Patricia Kayden
@cokane:
Not trying to be argumentative, but what does this have to do with celebrating Columbus Day versus Indigenous Peoples’ Day? That argument could be used to handwave away slavery and every other atrocity that has ever been committed. We don’t have to celebrate Columbus regardless of whether or not what he did was considered evil back in his day.
omnes omnibis
@Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again):
Which Bill and Ted movie was that from?
ThresherK
Guess which county sheriff got uninvited from speaking at UNewHaven later this month?
You get 1 1/2 tries.
Humdog
@omnes omnibis: Did you lose your shift key? And spelling your second name differently too? I call imposter!
schrodinger's cat
@cokane: The British rule of India was far worse than the Mughal rule. Before the British rule, India was one of the richest countries in the world and after they were done with India, it was one of the poorest.
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
the earlier stuff isn’t really vaccination tho. also too from wikipedia,
Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again)
@omnes omnibis:
The fifth one. It’s AWESOME!
Mnemosyne
@Patricia Kayden:
To be fair, Canada had fewer public mass murders of Italian immigrants than the US did, so they probably felt less of a need to make their Italian immigrants feel included.
Raven Onthill
Why not Indigenous People’s Remembrance Day, like Holocaust Remembrance Day?
“It’s been very nice, but I have to scream now.”
cokane
@Roger Moore: You make a good point, but this is not what appears in activist videos on this issue — events from Columbus’ own biography are the central themes. Admittedly I haven’t seen them all. Again, I think Columbus’ life is pretty common knowledge and his “day” seems to be more about marking an important world historical event. Aside from maybe praising the man for rejecting flat-eartherism, I rarely see Columbus getting -ANY- positive coverage. Even in grade school in the 80s we were taught some extent of the nasty things he did. Admittedly I’m not Italian nor did I grow up around a bunch, so there’s maybe some propaganda I’m missing.
We could easily litigate holidays into oblivion this way, July 4th being an easy example of some craven hypocrisy (one even many founders were well aware of).
chopper
@hueyplong:
isn’t that just a circle?
cokane
@Patricia Kayden: And the opposite argument could be used to do away with the 4th and presidents’ day? There’s reductio ad absurdum on both sides
chopper
@Hal:
did he actually say “a can of pickles”?
cokane
@schrodinger’s cat: Not excusing the British but I’m not sure this has been proven to be 100% true. Though I’ll cop to great arrogance on this issue. And Muslim conquest saved its worst atrocities for black Africans anyways.
Omnes Omnibus
@Humdog: Not sure how or when that happened, but it’s fixed now.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Mnemosyne:
I call it Genocide Day. It’s not 2 minority groups; it’s a group whose ancestors were slaughtered and an immigrant group.
I was pretty sure where your sympathies lay. Here’s a long way that I’ll say while I knew what group is upset and even (sort of) why, I don’t give a shit who’s upset about the change. Because “formerly oppressed” minority group =/= indigenous group slaughtered by European immigrants whose descendants could then oppress more recent immigrants “minority group(s).” Fuck the Italian Americans who are upset – hey can boo hoo all the way to the special parades the wail about people no longer finding entertaining. They got called names; indigenous Americans got killed. By the hundreds of thousands. Big difference.
Schlemazel
@Napoleon:
Actually Haiti is exactly right. It was the name the indigenous people had for the island. Someone else . . . called it Hispaniola . . . I’m sure there must be some reason for that
wdit: sorry, @SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch: I should have read down first
Mnemosyne
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
See my Wikipedia link at #74 — Italian immigrants were subject to lynching, and the single largest mass lynching in US history was of Italian immigrants.
Again, it’s not an argument in favor of keeping Columbus Day, but it’s not like there’s a terrific history of acceptance to point to.
Chris
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
The bolded letters are what cinches it for me. I mean, I’m pretty sure I’d side with the American Indians even if it was still a factor – but the fact is, Italian-Americans haven’t been a marginalized, disenfranchised, or otherwise badly treated minority in this country for decades, so it’s really hard for me to care about this concern.
(Even if their ancestors did, in fact, have to endure a bit more than “being called names.”)
stibbert
@Nelle: In my experience, neighbors choose to not register to vote b/c they’re very poor. If they register to vote, they’ll lose their anonymity & expose themselves to local wage tax.
raven
@Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again): How you doing?
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
That depends on where exactly you’re looking at. At least in New England, the plague didn’t really hit until right before the first successful colonies, and it was the plagues that made the colonies’ success possible. There was still a thriving native population for quite a while afterward, and it was ultimately war that drove them out, not plague.
Mnemosyne
@Chris:
Again, I’m not arguing that Columbus Day should be kept in place, but ignoring the fact that it was specifically created as an ethnic holiday seems weird and short-sighted to me. To me, it’s better to acknowledge that history and say that it’s not really needed anymore than to ignore the history altogether and then not understand why some people might be mad that you’re ignoring their history.
Suzanne
@Chris: There is still some BS stereotyping and prejudice that occasionally bleeds over. At my last job, I had a boss who was honestly surprised to learn that my family were not mob bosses and that we do not all act like nor aspire to be like Snooki. But that is very mild and I certainly have no compunction with kicking Columbus Day to the curb to honor Indigenous People’s Day.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
Jeffery Amherst was born in 1717, so about 100 years after the Pilgrims landed. I think it’s fair to say that the majority of the disease damage was done before he got to New England.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Chris: Thank you. And I’m sorry, but I will take offense at comparing the biggest US lynching to the slaughter and continued marginalizationof indigenous Americans.
Peas and watermelons people. It’s a question of both scale and longevity. Any Native American Supreme Court Justices, living or recently deceased? I didn’t think so. “Domestic dependent nations,” finally getting a tiny bit of justice since 2009. Emphasis on the tiny – though I applaud this POTUS for that (among many other things).
Not an attack on you, Mnemosyne. But a big hot button for me.
Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again)
@raven:
I’m doing well. On my fourth different regimen of chemo- the first three were effective, but the side effects were too much. Had a six week break from it, late July to early September before starting the fourth (which is gemzar, if that means anything to you). I got back to eating and enjoying it (mouth sores, ya know), and my hair’s coming back, slowly but surely. It looks as if it’s coming in darker, too.
The Pale Scot
@SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch:
Smoked Em…
cokane
@Roger Moore: Wars in which certain native tribes allied with the Europeans, often later betrayed. But still. Again, this was all of human history from its dawn until sometime in the 20th C, imo.
Mnemosyne
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I’d be pretty indignant if someone did that, too. I’m not sure who you’re referring to, because I think I’ve been very careful to say that I have no problem whatsoever with Columbus Day being replaced by Indigenous Peoples Day.
My only argument has been that a lot of people don’t seem to realize that Columbus Day was actually Italian-American Pride Day, so they don’t understand why some Italian-Americans were vocally angry at the switch-out. Again, I think the way to deal with that anger is to discuss and acknowledge it while still moving forward with the switch-out rather than dismissing it as not a big deal that people were murdered on the basis of their ethnicity because even more people of a different ethnicity were murdered, too.
S. cerevisiae
@Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again): Have you read Stannard? .
Mnemosyne
Also, too, here’s a short history of the holiday from a source that has been working to make the switch to Indigenous Peoples Day, and it pretty much covers what I’ve been saying.
S. cerevisiae
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: The fucking horse is dead.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
But it’s weird as a basically ethnic holiday that gets treated as a full-on national holiday. Government workers get the day off, there’s no mail, etc., which we don’t get for St. Patrick’s Day, Cinco de Mayo, Chinese New Year, etc. The only other “ethnic” holiday that’s made it onto the national calendar is MLK Day.
Roger Moore
@Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again):
It often does. Don’t be surprised if it comes in thicker and curlier, too.
Suzanne
@Roger Moore: My husband, who works for a public school district, is working today. Some of the municipalities here are working and some aren’t. It’s weird. I am happy to get rid of Columbus Day and then have a real festival-type holiday that doesn’t get a day off work for Italian heritage. Indigenous People’s Day deserves a federal holiday.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
It’s a remnant of the times when Roman Catholics were a large and powerful voting block that needed to be catered to. Plus, given the direction things were going in the 1930s, a full holiday for Italian-Americans instituted in 1937 probably seemed like a bit of anti-fascist insurance.
But, as I’ve repeatedly said, what made sense then doesn’t make as much sense now, so I have no problem with switching it to a holiday that makes more sense for the modern world.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
Jimmy Kimmel brought the Feast of San Gennaro to Los Angeles. It looks really fun, but it’s kind of a madhouse, so I haven’t gone yet.
I miss the cool international festival that my school used to take us to in Milwaukee where you could wander from booth to booth trying the different ethnic foods (including Native American ones). There was probably dancing and stuff, too, but I was all about the foods and crafts.
Ruviana
@Baud: The epidemics in South America were in the 1500 and 1600s, and basically the result of being exposed to disease the Spanish brought that the indigenous populations had no immunity to.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again): Glad to hear you’re well, and darker hair sounds pretty cool. The coming back is the best part, of course. I hope you continue to feel better. I admire your good cheer about it all.
Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again)
@S. cerevisiae:
I’ve got to read that book yet, but from the criticism I have read, he includes disease as part of this genocide, which is absurd, knowing what we know about the history of germ theory. De Soto, who, I believe, Stannard ignores, is a perfect case-in-point against Stannard. De Soto was certainly pushy, and he fought the tribes of the Mississipian culture on a few occasions, but he only wiped out that culture in a generation simply by coming in contact with them. That was the biggest culture in what’s now the US, and one of the biggest in North America, yet it died off due to disease alone. I can’t call that genocide.
Waynski
@Mnemosyne: “…the single largest mass lynchings in the US was of Italian Americans…”
Could be a tie:
Patricia Kayden
@Roger Moore: I would suggest a remembrance. You’re right that celebrate doesn’t fit this particular occasion.
Patricia Kayden
@cokane: What event are “we” celebrating?
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: That sounds cool. Oddly, our state fair is one of the most Native-centric events we have here all year. They have Native foods and performers and competitions. Most whiteys around here probably never see that stuff except if they go to the fair. Cinco de Mayo and Dia de los Muertos are huge, as you would expect.
Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again)
@Roger Moore:
It was still pretty thick and wavy (curly as it got below the shoulders, which is where it was just before I was diagnosed) before it fell out/got shaved off. I’ interested in seeing how it comes out now.
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Thanks! I’m hoping I can keep fighting this off, but it’s a terminal cancer right now. That said, my oncologist in Ann Arbor told me in June, ten months after diagnosis, that I’d already outlived half the people who get this cancer by twice as long. So I’ve got that going for me. ;)
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again): Your good cheer is more amazing than just admirable. I hope that the end of the road many miles on down. And that you continue to feel well until that point.
Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again)
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
It’s never over. We give our atoms back to the stars, and our memories on to succeeding generations. If I kicked the bucket tomorrow, I’d die happy.
Bill_D
@cokane: “Aside from maybe praising the man for rejecting flat-eartherism, I rarely see Columbus getting -ANY- positive coverage.”
Such praise is misplaced since educated people of the day knew the Earth was round. Columbus’ innovation was accepting an erroneous notion of the size of the Earth, which turned his voyages from sure and total failure (if the Americas had not existed) to success for himself and Spain.
BillCinSD
This is Native American Day in South Dakota, pushed through by a Republican Governor in 1990 in an act that passed unanimously through the very Republican state legislature. While California and Tennessee do have a similar holiday in September, South Dakota is the only state that does not celebrate Columbus Day.
Patricia Kayden
@BillCinSD: Interesting. Good move.
PatrickG
@Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again):
I hope that I will approach such issues with your cheer and embrace of a life well lived. You’ve left a powerful memory in me.
Uncle Cosmo
@Suzanne:
They are indeed. But they have fuck-all to do with the Italians who emigrated to the US, since the vast majority of those post-Roman Empire Italian artists were from the northern part of the Boot: Firenze, Venezia, Milano, Bologna, Verona, Padova, eccetera. Whereas the vast majority of Italian-Americans’ ancestors were not only peasants (contadini) but came from il Mezzogiornio, the backward & hardscrabble country south of Roma (plus Sicily & Sardinia). The north & south of Italy at the time the nation was formed (1870) & at the time our ancestors beat feet for the New World were far, far more separate than North & South here. About all they shared was Catholicism, language & alphabet – & to be honest, the first two also diverged pretty radically from one another (cf. Carlo Levi, Cristo si e fermato ad Eboli [“Christ Stopped At Eboli]”)
This is something that pisses me off no end. When I hear some goombah blathering about “ourwonderful Italian cultural heritage” I want to scream out Gesummaria, shaddap! Our people had nothing to do with it!