By Greg Horner, Informer.
It’s that time of the year again; Columbus Day is here for Americans to celebrate the Italian explorer who “discovered” the New World while simultaneously ignoring the tradition of slavery, subjugation and genocide against the Indigenous Americans that he started.
Our public education system doesn’t do a good job when it comes to Columbus. Most people knew since the days of Aristotle that the Earth was round, Columbus wasn’t the first European to set foot on the American continents and how does someone discover a continent when millions of people were living there?
He did “sail the ocean blue in 1492,” but you never hear about what he did after he landed.
As the governor of the new colony, he forced the native Taino people to mine what little gold existed on the island and inflicted cruel punishments on those who resisted.
Columbus frequently tortured native and Spanish colonists; the king heard so many complaints that he ordered Columbus arrested on his return to Spain. A Spanish missionary who visited Hispaniola estimated that roughly 3 million native peoples had been killed under Columbus’ governorship.
Perhaps the only positive thing you can say about Columbus is that he was a good sailor, because he wasn’t a good man even by the low standards of his time. His legacy would set a precedent for how Spanish conquistadors and European explorers would treat the indigenous peoples for centuries to come.
Columbus Day wasn’t widely celebrated until the dawn of the 20th century, as a means for Italian-Americans who faced discrimination to embrace their heritage. Before then, most Americans didn’t think much about the explorer who never set foot in North America, but afterward he was treated with the same respect we give to the founding-fathers.
Supporters of Columbus Day spread many of the myths about the man that we’re still familiar with today – that he prevailed against the odds to prove the world was round, that he was the first man to discover the new world and (worst of all) that he was kind to native people and was a just ruler.
Today, thanks to the work of Native American groups, history is finally catching up to Columbus. Schools are starting to do a better job of teaching the reality of his crimes, and popular opinion is turning against a man who committed genocide against millions of people.
Across the country cities and states have begun to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day, or Native American Day, instead of or alongside Columbus Day. Places like Minneapolis, South Dakota and Traverse City have decided to use the second Monday of October to honor the lives and contributions of native peoples, rather than honoring a figure who did his best to subjugate them.
The United States, and in fact the entire Western world, will never be able to make up for the horrors that were inflicted upon Native Americans. But we owe it to the victims of colonial genocide to remember history for what it is, not to whitewash our past and sweep the bad parts under the rug.
Practicing Indigenous Peoples Day rather than Columbus is just a small way the United States can honor the contributions Native Americans made to this continent for over 10,000 years and to remember the crimes our own government perpetrated against native peoples.
Christopher Columbus shouldn’t be forgotten, he should simply be remembered as the man he was: a self-serving tyrant who heralded an apocalypse for an entire continent. On this Oct. 12, honor the lives of Native Americans and embrace Indigenous Peoples Day, because Columbus has never been a man worth celebrating
