Post #3: “Why Are We Still Celebrating Christopher Columbus?”
Photo by Junco Canché
Why Are We Still Celebrating Christopher Columbus?
“Ask an Old White Woman About Racial Justice” Post #3
We have no reason to celebrate an invasion that caused the demise of so many of our people and is still causing destruction today.
— Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne and Creek)
Sailor, explorer, and colonizer Christopher Columbus (born in Italy, settled in Spain) arrived on the shores of the Caribbean Islands in 1492, and on subsequent voyages landed in Central and South America (but never on the North American continent, as I had always assumed!). I want to pause here for a moment to reflect. I’m 70 years old. When I learned in elementary school that Columbus arrived in America, I assumed that “America” only meant North America. I realized later that my mistake is based on a white supremacist “colonization” of the word America, because there are, of course, Central America and South America! Yet we in the United States claim America all the time. Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” certainly does not refer to Mexico or Venezuela.
Besides what I learned in school about Columbus, it also seemed logical that my teacher meant the continental United States, because that must be the reason we have always honored Columbus in so many ways. Why else would we have so many landmarks to the man, if he never landed on the mainland? Did we really import a villain — who invaded other places but was never even here — and place him on a pedestal?
Even though Columbus never landed on our soil, he is often taught about and honored as a great navigator, adventurer, and discoverer who opened the door to the New World through his perseverance and faith — completely disregarding the fact that he was an extremely vile, cruel person taking advantage of Native peoples where he did land.
“Columbus Day” Origins, Briefly
Columbus is a hero to many Italian Americans, past and present, perhaps as a result of the ethnic and religious discrimination (including occasional violence) that Italian and Catholic immigrants faced in the 1800s and beyond. In 1891, 11 Sicilian immigrants were lynched in New Orleans because of the townspeople’s hatred toward them. Proud of their heritage, Italian and Catholic communities started organizing celebrations of Columbus in the form of parades and religious ceremonies. In 1892, a year after the lynchings, President Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation honoring Columbus as a discoverer. In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed “Columbus Day” a national holiday, with that declaration very much influenced by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization.
Was creating a national holiday the president’s appeal for unity among different ethnicities, or was it born of a true admiration for Columbus, the explorer, despite the vile acts he engaged in? I don’t know.
Columbus and the Doctrine of Discovery
1) The Doctrine of Discovery (see, Resources) issued by Pope Nicholas V in the 1450s, legitimized the enslavement and killing of Indigenous people and the seizure of their land by Christian monarchs and European colonizers on the grounds that native peoples were inferior because they weren’t Christian. 2) Under the spiritual and legal influence of the doctrine, Queen Isabella l and King Ferdinand ll of Spain, aiming to fulfill their goals of acquiring wealth, expanding their empire, and spreading Christianity, financed Columbus’s expeditions to the Americas. 3) A devout Catholic, Columbus set sail seeking gold and glory in the name of God. 4) Following the doctrine, many other explorers (some before Columbus) also set sail to conquer lands by any means. 5) Besides the devastation to native peoples, the doctrine expanded and solidified a system of racial demarcation, land theft, and discrimination that continues to this day.
About the Taíno People Columbus and his Followers Conquered in Haiti
The Taíno (a subgroup of the Arawaks) lived in balance with nature on the bountiful island of Haiti. At the time of Columbus, the Taíno population is estimated to have been between 1 and 2 million, but the invading Spanish nearly decimated them. (Today, a number of Taíno people still live in Mexico, South America, and elsewhere.) They had a complex social order; a successful, high-yielding form of rotation agriculture to grow their crops of corn, nuts, cassava, and other roots; and a spiritual practice that honored the earth and the seasons.
In a Zinn Education Project article, educator Bill Bigelow notes Columbus’s own assessment: “Columbus concluded that the Taíno people are ‘the best people in the world, and beyond all the mildest… a people so full of love and without greed. … They love their neighbors as themselves, and they have the softest and gentlest voices in the world, and they are always smiling.’” These same features, of course, made the Taíno people easier to subdue.
How Columbus Treated the Taíno
After arriving in the Caribbean, before his genocidal treatment of Native people in other countries, Columbus — seeking adventure and profit by any means — subjected the Indigenous Taíno people whom he “discovered” to enslavement, forced labor, rape, torture, and murder.
We need to learn something about the specific horrific details of Columbus’s invasion to help motivate us to stop honoring him. General ideas of what transpired may not be sufficient to convey how disrespectful it is for our towns, cities, states, and nation to continue venerating this man with statues, celebrating him with parades, and honoring him with a federal holiday.
Taíno Resistance
But to be clear, when attacked by Columbus and his Spanish followers in 1492, the Taíno people bravely resisted, although unfamiliar with organized warfare. During Columbus’s return to Spain, the Taíno rebelled against the invasion by destroying the Spanish fort La Navidad. They formed alliances among the islanders, raided other Spanish forts, and tried to sabotage the invaders in any way they could over a period of years.
Below are some examples of the heinous acts committed. Please be aware that the descriptions below are of tragic events and may be triggering. Feel free to skip over them.
Enslavement: To make up for the gold Columbus and his men could not find in sufficient quantities, they enslaved thousands of Taíno people to take back to Spain for forced labor. This led to the massive slave trade furthered by Columbus’s son in 1505.
Rape: Columbus rewarded his lieutenants with native women and even children to rape. He wrote a friend in 1500, “A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and … there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand.” (Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, by James W. Loewen; page 58)
Torture: In Haiti, among other despicable actions, Columbus and his men cut the hands off Native people who couldn’t or wouldn’t pay a tribute of a “large hawk’s bell of gold dust” to the Spanish from the nearby mines.
Murder: Under Columbus’s orders, Native people were killed by Spaniards using crossbows, small cannons, and swords. Hunting dogs tore through the flesh of those who resisted the Spanish or attempted to flee. The result was the near annihilation of the Taíno people.
Yet today, statues to Columbus still stand, and roadways and cities around the world — as well as a country — bear his name. Many school textbooks in the U.S. still give students an incomplete, heroic, racially biased account of Columbus, when in truth he was a perpetrator of vicious cruelties and injustices. Most textbooks make no mention of the harm he caused to the people whose lands he invaded.
Harm Caused to Native Americans in the United States
Honoring Columbus, the destroyer of Native people and cultures elsewhere, is just one of many harms done to Native Americans here in the U.S., even though there was no direct contact between them: (1) It is disrespectful and injurious for Native Americans to see a cruel conqueror of Native people in other lands celebrated, sending a message that Native people are inferior. (2) When non-Indigenous people see Columbus enshrined in so many ways, including a national holiday, and when they come to accept as the norm the myriad other racist messages, laws, policies, and practices against Native Americans, they are more likely to harass Native Americans, discriminate against them, and bully them, even leading to physical violence.
Resistance: The Toppling of Statues
For years, Native activists in the U.S. have been resisting the white supremacist culture and laws and have been seeking rematriation — that is, the reclaiming of Indigenous lands and ancestral remains for Indigenous people, and the return to a spiritual way of life, with deep respect for Mother Earth and the feminine. Native activists continue with courage, resilience, and purpose their ongoing battle for racial justice. Since the death of George Floyd this year, Native people have created new urban actions, such as toppling statues of Columbus in Baltimore, Miami, Boston, Richmond (Virginia), and other cities. Young Native activists contributed to Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago ordering the removal of three Christopher Columbus statues on September 4.
Resistance: From “Columbus Day” to “Indigenous Peoples Day”
Led by Native activists, the first city to replace “Columbus Day” with “Indigenous Peoples Day” was Berkeley, California, in 1992. Other cities and towns followed suit. States that have changed “Columbus Day” to “Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” or a related name, include South Dakota, with Native Americans’ Day (1990); Alaska (2017), North Carolina (2018), California, Michigan, New Mexico, Maine, Vermont, and Wisconsin, and others (2019–2020). Throughout these changes, some Italian Americans have loudly protested, while others have not. You’ll find a beautiful article by an Italian American advocating for Indigenous Peoples Day here.
In a video titled “Happy Columbus Day?”, Native activist Mark Charles (Navajo) presents a Native American perspective on Columbus Day:
What Can White People Do?
Below, I’ve listed some action steps you can take, as well as some resources to help white people learn about Native people. Study can lead to a tipping point, which I referenced in my last post, where you have so fully embodied what you know that you become a bold antiracist activist. Indigenous justice should concern us all!
“Whatever we do to any other thing in the great web of life, we do to ourselves, for we are one.” — Brooke Medicine Eagle, author and singer/songwriter
Let’s work with Native people to continue the removal of statues of Columbus and the replacing of “Columbus Day” with “Indigenous Peoples Day” in places where these changes have not yet been made. The historic treatment of Native people by “conquerors” and colonists through the centuries has had disastrous consequences for Indigenous people — and the absurdity of celebrating people like Columbus must be recognized.
Native Americans have a long history of being unjustly treated, which continues today. In addition to the theft of their lands and the violation of rights that were guaranteed through government treaties, Native Americans must now also deal with problems such as fracking and oil extraction on their land, unfair policing and incarceration, and inadequate federal funding of schools and health care systems on reservations.
Every act and system that harms Native people must be dismantled. Educate yourself and support Native organizations with your time, money, and other resources.
ACTION STEPS
Toolkit for How to Change “Columbus Day” in Your Community
Zinn Education Project: “Abolish ‘Columbus Day’ Campaign”
Here, you’ll find a toolkit with sample resolutions for changing “Columbus Day” in your community. In addition, the Zinn Education Project offers a how-to guide based on the experience of a Massachusetts Indigenous group in a city campaign.
Petition
Petition any stores that still offer “Columbus Day” sales to change the names of those sales. Tell them you won’t shop there if they do not, or that you will report your concern on Yelp or another review site. Encourage your friends and family members to do likewise.
RESOURCES FOR LEARNING MORE
Books and Articles
“Exploration or Exploitation? The Doctrine of Discovery”
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of The United States (REVISIONING HISTORY), by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. (2019) An edition for young people is also available.
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, by James W. Loewen. (1996; reissued in different editions, 2018 and 2019) Winner of the 1996 American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship
Rethinking Columbus: The Next 5,000 Years, edited by Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson. (1991; reissued with updated materials, 2003)
Digital Platform
Indian Country Today is a daily digital news platform that covers the Indigenous world:
Thanks for taking action!
About the cartoonist: Junco Canché (Joaquin Junco Jr., aka Junco Canché), Toltecatl (the word means artisan in Aztec mythology), was born in the United States and raised in Mexico. He is an assistant to Lalo Alcaraz, creator of the syndicated daily comic strip “La Cucaracha,” and he is also a contributor to the podcast “Cultura Firme.”
