Columbus Day v Indigenous People's Day v Leif Erikson Day

[Max_S]

@Telemark

@Max_S

But I don’t see how an Indigenous People’s Day holiday will particularly work toward that end; certainly not any better than Columbus Day

This is a ridiculous argument. You’re essentially saying that having a holiday that celebrates someone who never reached the American mainland, was from a country that wasn’t involved in the early history of America, sailed under the flag of a country that was a strong rival to the Europeans that actually settled in what became the United States, enslaved, tortured, and killed the people he met in the new world, is somehow a better way to teach about indigenous peoples than a holiday that actually, you know, celebrates the people you are trying to celebrate.

You must have misunderstood my argument. I did not claim it was a better way to teach about indigenous peoples, that part of my response to kenobi_65 was about “the tragic history of Native Americans”. In the years between Columbus’s voyage in 1492 and the establishment of Jamestown in 1607, the indigenous population of the Americas was literally decimated - from around 60 million to 6 million people. This was a fact taught in school.

The particulars of Columbus’s voyage, his profiteering character plus the discovery of gold and the exploitation/subjugation of the peoples he encountered, lead directly to the conquistadores and epidemics that followed in the sixteenth century, including notably for the U.S., the near-total destruction of the Mississippian culture and a strong distrust of Europeans in surviving native populations. Spanish efforts at colonization and exploration - starting with Columbus himself - set a precedent for all future European colonization efforts, including those by the English and in spite of their rivalry.

~Max