Last Monday was Columbus Day, as many people know, but as this holiday brought a long weekend and a day to relax or an excuse to have a cookout for some, it also brings a lot of controversy. This controversy is over the abuse and killing that Christopher Columbus carried out on so many Indigenous peoples after arriving to America. According to History.com, “Upon arriving in the Bahamas, the explorer and his men forced the native peoples they found there into slavery. Later, while serving as the governor of Hispaniola, he allegedly imposed barbaric forms of punishment, including torture,” and this is exactly why people are opposed to celebrating him. There has been a wide spread movement to get rid of Columbus Day and replace it with Indigenous Peoples’ Day which so many people (including myself) did this past holiday on our own. The point of writing this diary however was because I came across this post on the holiday saying “have you actually looked up why we praise Christopher Columbus? The reason is actually ridiculous…” and then went into some detail about how they only chose him as an explorer to celebrate because he wasn’t another typical English explorer. Now I did some digging and there is some truth to this, but the person obviously twisted the information to make it seem more ridiculous than it actually is. According to Wikipedia’s page on Columbus Day, they state, “For the 400th anniversary in 1892, following a lynching in New Orleans where a mob had murdered 11 Italian immigrants, President Benjamin Harrison declared Columbus Day as a one-time national celebration. The proclamation was part of a wider effort after the lynching incident to placate Italian Americans and ease diplomatic tensions with Italy,” which is basically saying that the claim
“we celebrate him because he’s not English” is somewhat true. They chose to celebrate him because he was an Italian explorer and they hoped it would ease tensions with Italy and create more acceptance in the United States of Italian immigrants. It is also a day for Italian Americans to celebrate their heritage. This can relate back to class in a way because in this situation Italian immigrants were treated like “others” in a similar way John Lewis and the people during the civil rights movement were.
It is very sad that the tales of Christopher Columbus’ torture, abuse and murder of American Indians is not taught in schools. I remember being taught about him in history, probably back in fourth or fifth grade. This was the first time he was mentioned. Nowhere in my years of public school, from that first time hearing about him in fourth grade to my last history class probably my sophomore year, did I ever learn about all the awful things he did. We are taught in school that he “founded” America, but weren’t there already people living on this land before he showed up? How do you claim to discover a country that has already been inhabited? We are taught to idolize him as this amazing explorer even though he treated the current inhabitants the way he did. We must normalize teaching the truth about Christopher Columbus, put a stop to brain washing children into patriotically idolizing him, and we must make Indigenous People’s day a national holiday.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk…
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Hi Jessica,
Thank you for this post. I agree that it is pretty mind baffling that we are taught to sort of idolize Christopher Columbus at such a young age. We are even taught a little song to remember the year he “found” our country. I think it is important to teach children at a young age that this country already had original suitors before the Europeans arrived. You can’t teach young kids about the raping and pillaging, but they can learn about the Native Americans and their rich history before they were colonized. Although I was taught in high school history class about the horrible things Columbus did, it is interesting to think that my parents were probably never told that during their public education. They may have learned that years later.
Great topic, Jessica!
It’s so heartbreaking to know that many still celebrate a holiday that was built upon the oppression of others. I was also taught that Christopher Columbus was someone we were supposed to view as intelligent, brave, etc. As reiterated in this class, colonialism is a systemic injustice that’s all too common.