Indigenous People Day

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That’s what we should celebrate tomorrow. Forget Columbus; he was a rapist, a pillager of land; in short, a medieval thug. So no, I don’t celebrate a day named for any cultural assassin (s), or a day named for someone who discovered a place that had habitants that knew who and where they were. Sorry. I think that any Latino/a that does celebrate it is misguided and misinformed. For the record, making a discovery involves the acknowledgment of something that was unknown until that time-certainly not the case with respect to the indigenous people that were here when that asshole arrived. It does not involve renaming, raping, slave trading or conquering. But, there are others more notable than I that make the point in a much more succinct and important way…

• “Columbus makes Hitler look like a juvenile delinquent,” asserts American Indian activist Russell Means.
• Winona LaDuke deplores “the biological, technological, and ecological invasion that began with Columbus’ ill-fated voyage five hundred years ago.”
• The National Council of Churches declares the anniversary of Columbus “not a time for celebration” but for “reflection and repentance” in which whites must acknowledge a continuing history of “oppression, degradation, and genocide.”
• Historian Glenn Morris accuses Columbus of being “a murderer, a rapist, the architect of a policy of genocide that continues today.”

A reason to celebrate? Not at all.

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