"With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."
so said columbus, on meeting the arawak indians. how disgraceful that this man, and what he began, is celebrated all over the u.s. today. it shows a lot of what this country stands for. ugh.
“..But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.” – an excerpt from howard zinn’s a people’s history of the united states
there’s a lot more out there, read some today:
~ first-hand account by bartolome de las casas, from a short account of the destruction of the indies
~ history not taught is history forgot: columbus’ legacy of genocide, an excerpt from the book indians are us by ward churchill.
~ the truth about columbus by james loewen, available as a pdf
~ many more links on this page
it makes me angry that my little nieces and nephew are still being taught the idiotic “in 1492, columbus sailed the ocean blue..” blah blah, perpetuating the lies and brain washing that’s been going on for centuries. you better believe i’m going to be reading them other histories all together when i get back.
“…so we have to ask the very simple question: why does the holiday even exist? And it exists in part to advance a national ideology of celebrating invasion, conquest and colonialism.” – from a recent democracy now! segment
p.s. “stop saying this is a nation of immigrants!”
{ posted 9 October 06, under politics & lots of links }
comments
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At my college (CalArts) we had this day off, but we called it “Native American People’s Day.” I much prefer that to Colombus Day!
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At UC Santa Cruz they didn’t even acknowledge columbus day as a holiday. As it should be! It’s a sad day to celebrate.
~ Moni
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linking this. thank you.
~ rose
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I must admit I felt really uncomfortable today when they had on the news about the fact that the original financers of the Columbus Expedition actually place a wreath on the statue of Christopher Columbus her in Columbus, Ohio each year, had written a letter to the local Indian tribes to invite them to come to the wreath celebration today. The speech I guess was all geared at the Italians and the Indian’s becoming friends and getting along together.
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In my home town there is a statute of Columbus, and every year at this time someone carves out a pumpkin and puts it over his head. How apt.
I have to admit that although I know a lot of history is not as written, I did not know this.
Your post makes me think of an interview that I just heard with Desmond TuTu. There’s a link to the audio file on my Big List under Inspirations. You should listen to it.
~ Julia
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I ignored the fact that it was Columbus Day altogether and celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving (despite my lack of being, um, Canadian). Somehow, it just seemed more appropriate (and don’t even get me started on the whole Thanksgiving myth of the Pilgrims and the Indians being “friends”).
~ Liz
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happy canadian thanksgiving! the difference in histories between the two countries is so fascinating. i’d say that both the brits and the americans did a pretty poor job of diplomatically taking over the land (re: natives), however the mentality of the two countries is pretty different. maybe its partyly because canada isn’t yet “free”, but maybe that’s a good thing!
btw i hope your luck has gotten better!
~ lori z
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I think that the importance of this post is lost on many. People want to fight the truth because this isn’t what they were taught.
They are trying to erase evil, erase a tribe, erase a whole society. Who decides what the real story is and what our children learn? It is so absurd. So much can be learned from history – so much can be done about today.
I am glad that I read your post.
My great-grandfather was the chief of the Nisga’a tribe. My Grandmother lost her status when she married a white man. [So you see, on my native side of the family I am considered a little Indian princess.] I will teach my daughter to value this part of her heritage, it is part of who she is.
Here even in Canada, as a whole, Natives are looked down upon. It makes me very sad that their culture is hanging by a thread and isn’t valued, and so many have such volatile opinions based on “Columbus Crap”.
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I was totally ignorant of this and am now very, very saddened and upset to hear of the plight of the native Indians and the inhumane acts of the invaders.
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Great post! In my college history class the textbook was Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. It was the most mind blowing experience of my college life. I now take great pleasure in debunking the “facts” we learned in grade/middle/high school with others who have not been “enlightened”. It’s a real shame that as a nation we can’t admit to and accept our truths.
~ Janet
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Truly there is not enough education on the real history of the era of the first meeting of Europeans and Indians. I think Zinn had such a diverse and giant task with APH that he rushes through the context and analysis on the history of early contact though. I recommend Richard White’s The Middle Ground if you’re interested in a deep historical account of the way both the Indians and the Europeans were changed by this meeting. Thanks for the post.
~ Emily
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a quick reply to emily’s comment, as i’d never heard of that book and, once researching it, thought what this might be interesting to others..
(i found reading the introduction to the book particularly useful as well as jeff hendricks’ review on amazon )
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thanks for your comment emily ~ i hadn’t heard of that book before, so i’ve just spent the past couple of hours (!) researching it online. my conclusion is that i feel pretty confident in saying that were i to read it, this book wouldn’t change my mind, or position, on the horrors of celebrating columbus day, nor of the shame it highlights about the u.s. and our history on this continent. here’s why..zinn has commented that he was trying to write ‘a people’s history’ from the viewpoint of those neglected in most history books. of course, finding no native memoirs, “Well, they left no memoirs, no histories. Their culture was an oral culture, not a written one. Besides, they had been wiped out in a few decades after Columbus’ arrival. So I was compelled to turn to the next best thing: The Spaniards who were on the scene at the time. First, Columbus himself. He had kept a journal.” as far as i’ve been able to find, white does not try to write from the native perspective in ‘the middle ground’, however much he makes the algonquins a central part of his book of course. he pulls from the colonizers’ own words, which makes a lot of the information he relates fairly suspicious to me.
from what i’ve understood, he discusses a specific time period in one part of the continent. even granting that what he says is true, it by no means is an example to focus on when we’re discussing how european invaders killed the natives people here. it’s by far an exception, if it’s even true to begin with. the whole concept of a middle ground sounds pretty bogus to me though, i must say. it sounded more like the french manipulated the native tribes so that they could get rich, or at least more money, for a short time period. i wonder if native americans today would call that a middle ground. white writes of an “imperial middle ground” that to me, though maybe i’m oversimplifying, doesn’t mean middle ground between the french and the algonquins but is rather still very firmly in the empire just by looking at the term’s words alone. (also, and strangely, white says that the middle ground is based on misunderstanding that are .. positive? i don’t see how miscommunication should be a goal or can consistently lead to positives.)
anyhow, i haven’t read the book – so i might be really off. i’ll definitely keep it in mind and i appreciate knowing about it as it seems to be an important book among historians. there’s probably a lot more i need to think on, but it’s getting late. i’m going to post this to the comments of the post and see if anyone else has anything to add.
~ andrea
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Thank you for this entry. I had wanted to post on my blog something similar, but it was a bad week, and I couldn’t wrap my head around what I wanted to say.
Thank you, you said it for me without even knowing it :) And, I’ve linked it!In the comments, Emily recommends White’s The Middle Ground. I cannot agree more!
~ Carla
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Hey Andrea, I just wanted to add in my voice about Emily’s comment. I think that the book title is a little misleading. From what I understand, “middle ground” is not meant as a compromise between historical versions of events, but the translation of a native word for meeting place. Emily is a western historian at a prominent university and is very well-read on the subject. Although the name of the book itself might cause you to think she was challenging your post, my understanding is that the middle ground supports the position you took. I believe Emily was offering an additional resource, rather than trying to change your opinion on the events that occurred. Normally, I probably wouldn’t chime in at all on this. But I’m quite fond of you both, and I would hate for you to misunderstand her intention.
~ Julia
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I wanted to add that Julia is absolutely correct about The Middle Ground. It was not at all a challenge, but an agreement with additional reading material ;)
Might I also add to that list, Ned Blackhawk’s “Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West”. We had the pleasure of knowing Ned while we lived in Madison Wisconsin not only through the UW’s American Indian association, but also through a local Native Families group we participated in (My husband is Menominee Indian)
Ned’s latest concentrates on the west, but is a good read.~ Carla
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