I propose we replace Columbus Day as a holiday with a new one. It was originally conceived as a means to promote acceptance of immigrants from Central and Western Europe when we often looked down upon as undesirable. What holiday would you replace it with? The biggest problem for me is that too many evils that Columbus is not guilty of get attributed to him and the one that I find him the most guilty of is rarely linked to him. Columbus did not try to establish permanent cities and colonies and did not engage in intentional genocide. The misfortunes that devastated the natives did start with Columbus when he tried to convince Queen Isabella that the natives would make good slaves. She disagreed. But it continued for hundreds of years that contagions that wiped out two-thirds and 90 percent of the people, to the proselytizing and removing of children to force them to adapt to the European way, to intentional exposure to small pox, to using them as pawns by European powers against the Americans, powers that would abandon the allies after both the French and Indian War and the War of 1812, to the forced removal, and treaties that were negotiate in bad faith. All peoples had come from a tribal past at some point. Colonization has never been good to native peoples, but the evils of Americans colonization is one of the most extreme. To me, when we place the responsibility at the feet of one man, we absolve thousands who should share the burden. Once again, what holiday do you think we should replace Columbus Day with?
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 03:01:08 +0000
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