Happy Indigenous People Day

I don't know if I like that title.  I tried to think of a better one.  I didn't want to say "Fuck Columbus Day" because ... well just because.  So maybe Un-Happy Columbus Day?  Point not driven home enough.  I wanted to flip the whole Columbus Day thing to give the Indigenous Peoples (a.k.a Indians, American Indians, Native Americans, etc.) some due for all they've been through since Columbus washed up on the shores of the Bahamas.  I didn't want it to sound so much like a celebration because it's probably more a day of mourning for them.  But I figured some upliftment could do little harm.  Hence, the title.

As a child, you go through school and take the history lessons they give you.  My father turned the whole thing upside down when I was in the first grade.  I came home talking about Abraham Lincoln.  He immediately retorted, "Abraham Lincoln was a fake!"  That fucked me up because I swore they talked about how great he was earlier.  But I took what he was saying as true.  A little while later, I flipped through this book he had lying around called The Autobiography of Malcolm X.  The original hard-back version (which has been stolen from me by Anasa King - yeah I called you out, give me my book back!) with the photos in the middle.

That distrust carried over to Christopher Columbus, especially after I heard the Dick Gregory joke about his discovering America.  Nevertheless, I was fascinated, as a young child, by those tales of the explorers coming over here in search of all this gold.

Flash forward to my law school experience in Los Angeles.  I worked at this fascinating bookstore, Eso Won Books.  During my time there, I became a Derrick Bell freak.  I had them order me a copy of Race, Racism, and the American Law.  One of the two owners, James Fugate and Thomas Hamilton, not sure which one, suggested that if I liked that book, I should check Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.  So I did.

That first chapter blew me away.  It spoke about Columbus in a deep way.  Such as he couldn't wait to enslave the Arawaka tribe that resided there.  That his first impulse was to capture and control the people there.  That he felt that he could get them to tell him where the illusory gold treasures were.  How the concept of enslaving nonwhite peoples may have been born during this time. 

And capture and torture he did.    Then he went back to Spain.  Lied and exaggerated about how he found a land plentiful of gold.  Brought back sixteen thousand troops with him and they commenced to invading the Caribbean Islands in search of gold treasures they would not find.  Meanwhile, rape, torture, and pillage they did - on large scale (sound familar?)  A pattern was born.

As Zinn points out, "What Columbus did to the Arawaks of the Bahamas, Cortes did to the Aztecs of Mexico, Pizarro to the Incas of Peru, and the English settlers of Virginia and Massachusetts to the Powhatans and Pequots."  All of these explorers' tales that fascinated me as a child were turned upside down.  I didn't appreciate that those stories were told from the conquerors' perspective.  The flip-side was a different perspective to the stories.

The conquerors' perspective filters down today with a national holiday named after a maniac and liar.  As a result, we label different tribes of people "Indians."  There are over 400 nations of people who we refer to as Indians.  We don't call white people Europeans.  We refer to them by their nationality - English, French, German, Italian, Greek, etc.  How do we disrespect a people so badly but demand the same respect by something as simple yet significant as calling them by their proper name?

It filters down today with the mythology of the Old West and how it was "won."  In many and most movies that are Westerns, we are seeing played out the stories from the conquerors' perspective.  The Indians are the bad guys when it was their land the U.S. settlers were taking?

Think about the terminology - settlers.  Notice how settlers don't want to share but just demand that what they've taken is rightfully theirs? (Sound familiar?)  And if you disagree with giving it to them, they will kill you.

Another word emblematic to the so-called holiday - "discovery."  Like Dick Gregory joked, how do you discover what's already there?  Sure from your perspective, it's a "discovery" because it's new to you.  But in the context of Columbus, it's as if he found a land that suddenly appeared out of the blue, which has been equated to a great deed.  As it pertains to the concept of a flat earth (think about how limited you must be in your thinking to seriously believe the world was flat), he might deserve some recognition.  But for "discovering America?"  No.  Hell no.

It filters down today when Leonard Peltier is still sitting in a federal prison for a crime credible evidence suggests he didn't commit.  But because he found it necessary to fight physical and mental genocide of his people via membership in the American Indian Movement, he remains in a federal prison.

It filters down today when Professor Ward Churchill loses his job for exercising Freedom of Speech about 9/11.  The issue became so convoluted with twists about true "Indian" heritage to plagiarism to tenureship at a State university that you knew it was a fuckery.

Back to Columbus, don't take my word for it.  Pick up a copy of Zinn's book and read the first chapter.  If you cannot afford one (not unusual in this economy), the library is still free.  All you need is a library card. 

But Columbus Day, or Happy Indigenous People Day, is just a paid day off.  It's not a reason to celebrate.