By Julissa James
Editor in Chief
The second Monday of October came and went. Another year of Columbus Day sales, closed post offices and a slap in the face to indigenous people.
Is getting 25 percent off in department store specials and having an extra day added to your weekend worth celebrating rape, murder and genocide?
I don’t think so.
For many of us, the idea that Columbus discovered America is something people have been brainwashed into believing since elementary school. It was not until I started college that a professor let me in on a little secret: Columbus did not discover the New World; he accidently stumbled upon something that was already there and proceeded to ruin it.
We all know the sugarcoated version of the story. In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue with the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria by his side. He hoped to find a shortcut to Asia and by chance “discovered” America.
Columbus never stepped foot in North America proper. He accidently landed on the shore of an island he called Hispaniola, which is now split into Haiti and the Dominican Republic. And it was already inhabited with millions of indigenous people from the Taino tribe. At first, he thought he was in India, hence the inaccurate term still used today as a name for natives: Indians.
What he and his men did do intentionally was capture, enslave, torture, rape and colonize the Taino people. All in the name of religion, of course.
Life for the Taino people became so unbearable, they resorted to mass suicide and eventually Columbus would be responsible for wiping out the majority of the population.
Pre-Columbus, the population of Taino people was placed at 1.5 to 3 million. Four years after he arrived, it was down to 1.1 million, according to truthout.com.
Some would argue Columbus was one of the first great explorers, and for this reason, he should be commemorated.
Unfortunately, his “adventures” sparked countless years of colonization of the Americas by other European nations, including the mass genocide of native people in North America.
This information should be taught by our institutions, but not celebrated. The fact that Columbus Day continues to be a federal holiday is mind-boggling. He never stepped foot in America, and the land he did step foot on, he terrorized.
It seems hypocritical that a nation so hellbent on ending terrorism continues federally recognize Christopher Columbus, one of the original terrorists, as a hero.
What should be nationally acknowledged every second Monday of October, is the strength of Native Americans and indigenous people everywhere.
Berkeley and South Dakota became the first city and state, respectively, to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day in the 1990s, according to The Washington Post.
Many communities across the nation have followed suit. Most recently, Vermont and Phoenix have joined the list of places that celebrate Native Americans on Columbus Day.
It’s time that Indigenous Peoples’ Day be recognized on a federal level in place of Columbus Day. A three-day weekend for some, is not worth the continued commemoration of a man responsible for so many atrocities.
