Reconsider Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day! Abolish Columbus Day
Columbus Day marks not a day of discovery, but the beginning of hundreds of years of a horrific genocide, not just for indigenous communities but also for other communities of color with whom Native American history is profoundly entwined.
“Columbus Day” was made a federal holiday in 1934, when Native American Indian nations and communities had little voice to protest the celebration of the onset of colonization and genocide in the Western Hemisphere. Columbus Day is a painful symbol of that traumatic past.
It’s time for the US government to acknowledge its colonial past and make a commitment to decolonization. Doing away with the celebration of Columbus, the very face of European colonialism could be that gesture. In its place, proclaim that fateful date of the onset of colonialism as a Day of Solidarity and Mourning with the Indigenous Peoples.
1492 changed the western hemisphere forever. 1492 was the year foreign ships showed up on the shores of “The New World” and the people in those ships brought a tragic change to indigenous history and lives forever.
Christopher Columbus opened the door of tyranny in native land, and unfortunately, on the second Monday of every October each year in America people celebrate “Columbus Day”. There is no honor in celebrating this heathen genocidal maniac.
Columbus Day is salt in the open wounds of millions of people of color all across the Americas and the Caribbean. Just research and see for yourself who really was Columbus.
Celebrating Columbus Day promotes the following:
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- Slavery
- Rape
- Child Abuse
- Abuse of Women
- Land theft
- Racism
- Dominance
- Colorism
- Injustice
- Forced Religious Beliefs
- Government Regulation of American Indian Spiritual Practices and Culture
- Murder
- Greed
- Capitalism
- Oppression
- Suppression
- Colonial Race Reclassification of People of Color
- Cultural Appropriation
- Patriarchy
- Hate
- Destruction of Mother Earth resources
- Germ Warfare (Smallpox blankets given to native people by invader to kill)
- War
- Europeanization
Some history about Christopher Columbus:
Columbus supervised the selling of native girls into sexual slavery. Young girls of the ages 9 to 10 were the most desired by his men. In 1500, Columbus casually wrote about it in his log. He said:
“A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand.”
He forced these peaceful natives to work in his gold mines until they died of exhaustion. If an “Indian” worker did not deliver his full quota of gold dust by Columbus’ deadline, soldiers would cut off the man’s hands and tie them around his neck to send a message.
Slavery was so intolerable for these sweet, gentle island people that at one point, 100 of them committed mass suicide. Catholic law forbade the enslavement of Christians, but Columbus solved this problem. He simply refused to baptize the native people of Hispaniola.
On his second trip to the New World, Columbus brought cannons and attack dogs. If an enslaved Native American Indian resisted, he would cut off a nose or an ear. If slaves tried to escape, Columbus had them burned alive.
Other times, he sent attack dogs to hunt them down, and the dogs would tear off the arms and legs of the screaming natives while they were still alive. If the Spaniards ran short of meat to feed the dogs, Arawak babies were killed for dog food.
Columbus’ acts of cruelty were so unspeakable and so legendary – even in his own day – that Governor Francisco De Bobadilla arrested Columbus and his two brothers, slapped them into chains, and shipped them off to Spain to answer for their crimes against the Arawaks. But the King and Queen of Spain, their treasury filling up with gold, pardoned Columbus and let him go free.
One of Columbus’ men, Bartolome De Las Casas, was so mortified by Columbus’ brutal atrocities against the native peoples, that he quit working for Columbus and became a Catholic priest.
He described how the Spaniards under Christopher Columbus‘ command cut off the legs of children who ran from them, to test the sharpness of their blades. According to De Las Casas, the men made bets as to who, with one sweep of his sword, could cut a person in half.
He says that Columbus’ men poured people full of boiling soap. In a single day, De Las Casas was an eye witness as the Spanish soldiers dismembered, beheaded, or raped 3000 native people. “Such inhumanities and barbarisms were committed in my sight as no age can parallel,” De Las Casas wrote:
“My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature that now I tremble as I write.”
It’s time to reconsider Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day. Just say no to Columbus Day. You can start by writing your state representative to demand that Columbus Day be changed to “Indigenous People’s Day” each year for every second Monday of October.
Reconsider Columbus Day
Abolish Columbus Day
No More Columbus Day
SOURCE: Compiled by I Love Ancestry based on materials from Huffington Post
