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

Great Debates
41

I don’t really distinguish between national heritage and national identity. Thinking about it now, I guess national heritage can be more detailed about facts and specific objects, where as national identity is more of an attitude.

I don’t consider the history of Native Americans to be a part of U.S. heritage to the same extent that I consider European history to be a part of it. In my opinion Native American heritage is U.S. heritage to the extent that we live on the land that they used to live and, when applicable, to the extent their people have assimilated and bring their heritage and culture with them. For the most part I identify with the early Europeans who settled in the Americas more than the indigenous peoples already here, who they were in conflict with.

ETA: Example, I don’t consider myself a Seminole, I don’t identify with them, and I think it would be highly offensive to do so. But there are some place-names and local traditions that ultimately go back to when the Seminole tribe occupied this land. And the Seminoles have undoubtedly shaped local history.

Well, I’m sure the two hemispheres would come into contact eventually. I can’t say whether our history would be remotely similar if Columbus had not made his voyages.

ETA2: Also, I live/grew up in Florida. So, you know, Ponce de Leon, St. Augustine… predates and is more relevant locally than Jamestown.

~Max

42

I think this is the key point (in this and other similar discussions, though as I say above this is the most cut and dried IMO). Naming a day after someone, building statues of him, and naming places after him is the very definition of glorifying someone.

There is no way it can be construed as anything else. And Columbus is absolutely 100% not someone any society should be glorifying.

He’s not someone who did bad and good things but the good things are monumental enough that they deserve glorifying (I’d argue Churchill and Washington are both in this camp). The monumental thing he did is the bad thing. Sure reaching the Americas was a pretty good bit of seamanship (despite the later exaggeration this is on balance true IMO). But that doesn’t make him worth glorifying any more than the impressive generalship shown my Hitler’s generals make them worthy of glorification and praise.

43

I do think that’s a large part of the problem. There are a whole lot of people in the USA who want to be able to praise the existence of the country wholeheartedly, without being reminded that the existence of the USA is a tragedy (in many cases an existential one) for other nations.

They don’t want to be reminded of other major sins the country’s committed, either. To them, if they’re going to love the place, it has to be Great; and in order to be Great it has to be Good; and if it’s good then it must not have done Wrong.

Me, I always liked the bumper sticker: My Country, Right the Wrongs.

We’re here now. There’s no going back, and undoing what led to our being here now. But there is choosing what direction to go forward in. Sometimes the USA has made the right choices, there. We should try to do so more often.

I would be flat out terrified of those people. And I would be right to be.

I suspect, if they actually showed up at your house, that you would be also.

They’re not all gone, you know. And some are still living on portions of their original land.

The odd thing is that contact had been made before, and would indeed certainly have been made again. I agree that there was something about Columbus’ voyage that brought different results than earlier contacts; but I don’t think that was anything about Columbus. I think it must have been more the state of Europe in general at the time.

I may have said this before on these boards, can’t remember: if you’d asked people all over the world, in 1492, what the most important thing was that was happening that year: it seems to me extremely unlikely that any of them, anywhere, would have said ‘Some guy named Columbo got lost in the Atlantic ocean.’

44

That’s fair. I have nothing against changing the name of the holiday, and nothing against taking down statutes of Columbus the individual.

See also this topic

~Max

45

Oh, I would. No doubt.

Right.

… Cite?

I disagree. It’s possible that the English may have eventually found North America with their attempts from 1480 on to locate the legendary island of Brazil in the North Atlantic, but without news of Columbus finding land those searches may well have been abandoned. Who knows how the history of the world would have turned out otherwise.

~Max

46

I was going to say, why not just adopt Canadian Thanksgiving instead? I think a new excuse to eat turkey and watch football* would be a much easier sell for the vast majority of Americans.

*The superior Canadian game, of course, despite the heartbreaking loss of the RedBlacks this year…

47

See what I mean?

Canadian Thanksgiving Day - Where Americans give thanks for having Canadians as their neighbours (note the “u”), since we’ve hardly ever tried to invade them.

You know if just makes sense!

48

Six more weeks of Christmas music. Yay.

49

Look, we’ll do it this way: September is all Back to School. October up to Canadian Thanksgiving is all CFL, lumberjacks, beavertails, and curling. After CT, we put “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!” on 24/7 rotation until October 31st. Then we lean hard on American Thanksgiving, with a Black Friday add-on. After that, it’s all Santa and Jesus until Boxing Day, which we’ll re-brand as both Canadians and Americans laughing at the British. Then we top it all off with New Years Eve, and call it a season.

50

Among lots of others:

51

And isn’t even original to them: they borrowed it from soi-disant leftish “contrarians” like the late Christopher Hitchens, who articulated much of it in his 1992 “1492 was a very good year” schtick.

52

I thought you might have had some fringe theory in mind like Irish fishermen or Chinese sailors.

Leif Erikson is in the title, after all… although I will note that apparently his brother Thorvald &co. had the first contact with indigenous people who were sleeping in their canoes, and used the opportunity to murder them.

~Max

53

It should be noted that Leif wasn’t the first Norseman to see the North American continent. He just had better PR than the guy who did. In fact, we don’t even know who it was.

54

South Africa has had success in altering a more exclusive ethnic celebration into a national Heritage Day.

It was turning it into a holiday devoted to burning meat that really did the trick.

55

And you don’t consider that a failing? Because you can celebrate pre-Columbian history without identifying with the pre-Columbian indigenes.

It wasn’t continued searching for Hy Brasil that made English discovery of North America inevitable, it was cod fishing. By 1480 the Bristol fisheries had discovered the North Atlantic cod shoals. Lucking onto North America was only a matter of time from then.

56

I helped observe Columbus day by going to the grocery store and getting lost while trying to find the spice aisle.

57

I don’t know enough about those to have an idea whether there’s anything to them.

It seems to me really, really unlikely that the further development of European cultures wouldn’t have resulted, if nothing else, in somebody else eventually getting lost enough in the Atlantic ocean to notice that there was more land out there.

Plus which, again, there were already people going back and forth at the northern edges.

Would history have worked out differently in some ways? Very likely; whether for better or not there’s no way of telling. Would it have gone on for the next few thousand years, or even the next few hundred, without significant contact between Europe and what’s now the Americas? I don’t think that’s a remotely likely possibility.

Hah!

Thanks for the morning chortle.

58

I didn’t realize that. Okay, that makes sense.

~Max

59

Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but if we were to scrap Columbus Day and leave Indigenous People’s Day in its place, I think the focus would be post-Columbus. I would be surprised if any extant Native American tribe pre-dates Columbus in the contiguous U.S.

~Max

60

Do you seriously think all current Native American groups came into being after 1492?