No Self-Hating Name as "Indigenous Persons Day" - Keep Columbus Day

[danieldemol]

Didn't seem that bad when the Norse of all people landed here first. They don't even appear to have spread beyond their settlement in Newfoundland and they didn't stay long either.

I googled who discovered America first and Wikipedia came up saying of Columbus, "His expeditions were the first known European contact with the Caribbean and Central and South America."

Its a shame that Google couldn't find me a better answer at the top of the list.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I googled who discovered America first and Wikipedia came up saying of Columbus, "His expeditions were the first known European contact with the Caribbean and Central and South America."

Its a shame that Google couldn't find me a better answer at the top of the list.

Yeah, the Newfoundland settlement was built it seems in the 10th century, around the time when Alfred of Wessex was fighting the Great Heathen Army that invaded the British Isles.

 

[anna.]

Last Sunday, I was talking to a few of my friends, and mentioned stuff that happened over a previous Columbus Day Weekend. Someone "corrected" me, saying it is "Indigenous Persons Day." I snapped at him, saying, "I am sick and tired of being told we're bad people, that we don't belong here." I feel that there have been many movement of peoples around the earth, and the primitive people almost always lose the argument.

I also feel that smallpox, diphtheria and typhoid, originally spread by de Soto's horses left being, deserve a large share of the blame. The book 1491: The Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann posits that horses and rats were that vector and suggests that much of North America's Native American population was reduced by 90% to 98% by the spread of those diseases. In other words the migrant European population found far fewer Native Americans than had existed half a century before. If the native population was dense enough to have the famous major Aztec, Mayan and Inca cities and in the Midwest cities such as Cahokia, there was enough population to support transmission of highly contagious diseases.

It's a given that Africa and Asia largely held European invaders at bay; the Americas' and Australia's did not. European presence and penetration in Africa and Asia, on the same landmass, was quite minor, like likely because the population was dense and its leadership relatively intact. Smallpox, diphtheria and typhoid raced through the native populations in the Americas, Australia and New Zealand. In addition to the numbers killed, their leadership was decapitated, resulting in disorganization. I would like the shamers of relatively advanced Europeans to at least be honest.

We have the right to be here, and we are imperfect, but good. The Aztecs and Mayas were nothing to write home about.

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day!

 

[anna.]

We didn't starting colonizing The Americas until 100 years after Columbus. There are already holidays that are more relevant in that regard, like Thanksgiving and such. And again, nobody is suggesting that Columbus be scrubbed from history; remembering =/= commemorating.

It's not like he even set foot in what constitutes the U.S. anyway...

 

[anna.]

Columbus didn't discover the Americas, he didn't land in what would become the United States, the land isn't named after him and he was known among his peers to be generally ineffective and a terribly mean and cruel man.
Why celebrate someone who did nothing?

There you go. I posted that he'd never set foot in the states before I saw your comment here. (Does anyone else read threads from last to first sometimes or is that my weirdness?)

 

[Shadow Wolf]

There you go. I posted that he'd never set foot in the states before I saw your comment here. (Does anyone else read threads from last to first sometimes or is that my weirdness?)

I do that sometimes.

 

[Guitar's Cry]

Monday.

Garfield may have something to say about that.

 

[Guitar's Cry]

A lot Italian-Americans apparently see Columbus day as a celebration of Italian heritage. So, I don't see why we couldn't have both: Indigenous People's Day to remember the harm done to the Indigenous folk of this land and Italian Heritage day for celebrating Italian-Americans. It can be two things.

 

[SalixIncendium]

We have the right to be here...

Do you mean in the Bahamas or in Venezuela? Because that's where Columbus landed.

But I digress.

I call it Columbus Day, because that's when Columbus landed. I see "Indigenous People's Day" as more of a protest to Columbus Day, and while I can appreciate the sentiment, it's just too many damn syllables, like most euphemisms. That said...

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I see "Indigenous People's Day" as more of a protest to Columbus Day

It does seem that way despite that he just doesn't deserve a day.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

A lot Italian-Americans apparently see Columbus day as a celebration of Italian heritage. So, I don't see why we couldn't have both: Indigenous People's Day to remember the harm done to the Indigenous folk of this land and Italian Heritage day for celebrating Italian-Americans. It can be two things.

I'm sure they could find better than a useless governor and someone so heinously cruel that even his own peers commented on and disliked that about him. And considering what was normal then that would have been no easy accomplishment to be acknowledged as cruel in a society that was cruel to others.

 

[SalixIncendium]

It does seem that way despite that he just doesn't deserve a day.

Truth be told, I never saw it as a day to celebrate him. He was rather a douche.

I always saw it as an observation...a mark on the calendar of when the Americas were discovered by the Europeans.

I don't recall anyone ever raising a glass to the lad.

I'll also put out there that I have no horse in the race. I'm not voting, because I think arguing over the name for a day is rather silly given all the other concerns in the world.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Seven times people discovered the Americas – and how they got there

Columbus’s was the last of at least seven discoveries of the Americas.

theconversation.com

Makes an interesting read

 

[Guitar's Cry]

I'm sure they could find better than a useless governor and someone so heinously cruel that even his own peers commented on and disliked that about him. And considering what was normal then that would have been no easy accomplishment to be acknowledged as cruel in a society that was cruel to others.

That's a good point.

 

[anna.]

I'll also put out there that I have no horse in the race. I'm not voting, because I think arguing over the name for a day is rather silly given all the other concerns in the world.

So... another shower thread is off the table?

 

[Jimmy]

Then why isn't it called Leif Erickson Day? Europeans were in America and Canada centuries before Columbus rolled in.

Who knows

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

As a Canadian, I have no difficulty with "Canadian Thanksgiving Day," since that's what it is here.

But I wouldn't mind sharing that with Indigenous Persons Day. I'm not naive enough to fall completely for all that "noble savage" stuff, and certainly there was much violence (and savagery) on both sides. But the fact remains, Canada's (and the United State's) indigenous people were here before Europeans came along, and with their technical mastery eventually subjugated and later ruinously mistreated the natives, routinely breaking every treaty we ever made with them, whenever we wanted a little more of everything for ourselves. As to the taking of children from their families to "take the Indian out of them," and mistreating them horribly to do so -- that is not to be celebrated, but remembered. Perhaps we do need to remember what we humans are capable of, if only to remind us not to go there again.

 

[Link]

Self-hate can be a good thing. Self-admiration is often based on illusion.

 

[jbg]

I'm confused how an Italian explorer from five centuries ago became "we" today, nor how acknowledging Columbus' misdeeds somehow make "us" bad.

Stripping the name acknowledges our "badness" for even being here.

 

[jbg]

Part of me thinks we should still keep it Columbus Day and teach children what he did the bad things he did and celebrate the good things about us coming here for a better life and to also celebrate the Native Americans and the good things that we did with them. I don’t think we have to hide from his name. Eh either way. There’s other days like indigenous peoples day we remember the bad that we did, Black History Month we remember the bad things about slavery or 9/11 remembrance day we remember the bad. we can have Columbus Day and remember the bad can’t we? Or is his name the reason why? is it someone’s name that gets under people skin and makes it more personal? Probably not. I mean who do you think about on 9/11? Anyone bad?

Because it's celebrating the people and their culture rather than celebrating a man who committed terrible wrongs against their ancestors.

I just don't understand why Indigenous People's Day would be some form of "self-hate".

But if it were, the implication would be that the celebrators are in some form foes of the indigenous people, would it not?

OK, let's roll with it. Should we be commemorating the ceaseless warfare among the "Indigenous Peoples" that preceded European colonization, see War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage by Lawrence H. Keeley. Or the Mayan custom of throwing their sacrificial targets down cenotes (water holes), see Ancient Maya sacrificed boys not virgin girls: study - Reuters. The pre-Columbian Americas were not Edenic.