Still Living with Christopher Columbus

Still Living with Christopher Columbus

DPP’s October meeting is a week later than usual because of the Monday Columbus Day holiday this week -- which prompts attention to these perspectives:

 

Columbus Day Is the Most Important Day of Every Year

Columbus’ landfall in the Western Hemisphere was the opening of Europe’s conquest of essentially all of this planet. By 1914, 422 years later, European powers and the U.S. controlled 85 percent of the world’s land mass.  White people didn’t accomplish this by asking politely…  Formally, of course, European colonialism largely ended in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. Yet informally, it has — behind the mask of what Pope Francis recently called “new forms of colonialism” — continued with surprising success. Thus European colonialism is the central fact of politics on earth. And precisely because of that, it is almost never part of any American discussion of politics. Anthropologists call this phenomenon “social silence” — meaning that in most human societies, the subjects that are core to how the societies function are exactly the ones that are never mentioned.    More

 

Five myths about Christopher Columbus

An early American archetype, Columbus has long served as a model entrepreneur. Columbus Day blog posts and articles have included “3 Business Lessons Learned from Christopher Columbus” and “5 Lessons in Leadership Effectiveness from Christopher Columbus.” These inspirational essays boil down to memorable bullet points such as: “Find an opportunity where the wind is at your back.” One asks, “Do you have a Columbus in your company?” … Columbus was clearly no friend of native peoples, but a document discovered 10 years ago in Simancas, Spain, suggests he was an equal-opportunity tyrant. Witnesses testified that his brief government of Hispaniola was marked by routine cruelty not only to the native Taínos but also to Spaniards who defied or mocked him. A woman who reminded Columbus that he was the son of a weaver had her tongue cut out. Others were executed for minor crimes.   More

 

The US Way of War: From Columbus to Kunduz

Popular Resistance has reported on the the legacy of Columbus. Howard Zinn describes the true history of Columbus and the Indigenous people of North America. There is a great need for the Columbus myth to be revised with realities. When the truth is understood, it is evident the US is celebrating a brutal war criminal and that it is time to abolish Columbus Day…   The Kunduz bombing and recent US wars are all consistent with the “US Way of War” which includes terrorizing communities, killing civilians of all ages, denying them healthcare and even food. We see the latter two in tactics like economic sanctions that increase poverty or make prescription drugs unavailable. These tactics go back to the founders…  How do we get out of these depraved quagmires of our own self-creation? Nader gives an answer – a change in approach to the world, an end to war culture and a move toward a humanitarian culture…  Let’s stop repeating the mistakes [crimes] that have been with us since Columbus. Let’s end the American culture of war.   More

 

As Cities Give Columbus the Boot, Indigenous Peoples Day Spreads Across US

While the annual celebration of Christopher Columbus has fueled years of outrage, satire, and resistance, this year an alternative holiday recognizing the original inhabitants of the United States appears to have reached the mainstream.  In the past two months alone, eight major municipalities—including Albuquerque, New Mexico; Portland, Oregon; St. Paul, Minnesota; Bexar County, Texas; Anadarko, Oklahoma; Alpena, Michigan; Lawrence, Kansas; Carrboro, North Carolina; and Olympia, Washington—have opted to pay homage to the history and culture of the country's true native people by celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day on the second Monday in October. This wave follows recent moves in Seattle and Minneapolis, among others.   More