Columbus Day Is Canceled in Portland, Minneapolis, and Other U.S. Citi

This Columbus Day, while you’re enjoying ten percent off a new toaster at K-mart, not having to drive your kid to school before the sun rises or – if you’re Republican – enjoying the fact that the Federal Government is shut down for the day, maybe you can take a second to remember a common theme among many American Indian philosophies: No one owns the earth.

Red Nation co-founder Melanie Yazzie said observing Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead of Columbus Day acknowledges the “resistance and resilience of native peoples, and sends the clear message that it’s not OK to celebrate genocide”.

Berkeley’s decision went into effect in 1992, two years after the first Intercontinental Gathering of Indigenous People in the Americas, where hundreds of representatives from American Indian groups across the Western Hemisphere met in Ecuador and agreed to use Columbus Day as a celebration of their tragic history. Supporters say the nation should no longer celebrate the life of a man who committed such atrocities against the original people of the land.

“By default, we’re like the collateral damage of this trend”, he said.

A few people dismiss such disputes as merely symbolic, but words and symbols matter. “I dance hard because we’re suppose to be honoring those people, so I am very proud of who I am and where I came from and my people”. Their passive-aggressive maneuvering – combined with an avoidance of actual social and economic crises among native populations – constitutes the brand of flawed leadership that gives liberalism and progressivism a bad name among moderates. Slavery and death, mostly.

Christopher Columbus is nationally celebrated on the second Monday of October for supposedly discovering America. The vast majority of Italian-Americans, of course, have no involvement whatsoever with the Mafia, nor do they condone the crimes of Christopher Columbus. Estimates put the percent of the native population killed upon European arrival in the Americas at 90 percent.

Sometimes students will respond that “discovered” is just shorthand for “was the first European to discover”. This year, it will feature an official signing of the Indigenous Peoples’ Day proclamation. As many as 20 million Native Americans died in the centuries following the arrival of European settlers. There are obvious political judgments in the choice of those terms.

Harrell did not like my next question at all. But those words, despite the appearance of neutrality, also carry a politics.

While the momentum to make the change is gaining ground, not everyone is happy. Would you say that those newcomers “encountered” or “stumbled upon” your neighborhood?

Just about anything learned in USA history classes frames everything as being a battle of good (America) versus evil (anyone we don’t like). “He had three ships and left from Spain, he sailed through sunshine, wind and rain”, wroteWinifred Sackville Stoner Jr.in the poem The History of the U.S. I want people to understand that. We are told how crucial it is for people to know history, and there is much hand wringing about the current generation’s lack of knowledge about, and respect for, that history. “We still live under a sort of colonialism here, at least in the United States”.

On Tuesday, Portland’s City Council also declared Indigenous Peoples’ Day, something tribal leaders have been seeking since 1954, as did the City Council of Bexas County, Texas, according to US Uncut.

Plus the wheel, ironwork tools, a rule of equality under the law and a unifying language, among many other things. Then they all made telescopes. As William Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead”.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) – More cities are recognizing Native Americans on Columbus Day this year as they revive a movement to change the name of the holiday to celebrate the history and contributions of indigenous cultures around the country.