Columbus Day
 

Does anyone else find it sad that gov't workers have the day off to celebrate genocide?

Yep.

What a crock...:sad11:

What is the point of columbus day anyways? How does one celebrate columbus day besides department store sales?

I wish I had the day off.

People are actually believing this re-write of history that Columbus was nothing more than a murderer? For crying out loud, no matter how liberal you are you'd think a holiday celebrating the man who made America possible wouldn't cause so much controversy.

Revisionist?

I was reading what was written by Columbus himself, and writings from another person who was there at the time, the priest Bartolomé de las Casas.

uh what? he was LOST. STILL called the natives ALREADY THERE Indians.

" Hmm sir? Sir? WE aren't in the Indies"
"SO what. I'll call them Indians anyway. Now let's kill them and steal their land"

It is really weird to celebrate a guy who thought he'd landed in the Indies but instead "discovered" the Bahamas Archipeligo. After writing about how generous and gentle the local people were proceedes to claim their land for Spain, kidnaps a bunch to take back to the queen and leaves a bunch of his men behind to pillage, plunder and riddle them with syphilis. Nice guy to celebrate. (We just watched a PBS special on the guy - very informative!)

Columbus didn't discover a damn thing! He encountered people on an island which he thought was near India. Plan A was to search for gold, Plan B was to use the Arawaks as slaves and we all know the outcome....

Also fyi the word caribbean means cannibal, gee how lovely!

ETA: they first tried to use Arawaks as slaves but then Bartolomes de las Casas suggested using Africans....

Ugh. such a sore subject.
I can only imagine how truly beautiful America would be if the Native Americans had been able to flourish. I wish Columbus never landed and I wish the settlers never came. And I wish I was living in a Native world...


speaking of all of this, this is a good place to put in a plug for a great little book:
Native Wisdom for White Minds
You don't have to be white to have a white mind.
What is a white mind? As Anne Wilson Schaef learned during her travels throughout the world among Native Peoples, anyone raised in modern Western society or by Western culture can have a white mind. White minds are trapped in a closed system of thinking that sees life in black and white, either/or terms; they are hierarchical and mechanistic; they see nature as a force to be tamed and people as objects to be controlled with no regard for the future.

This worldview is not shared by most Native Peoples, and in this provocative book, Anne Wilson Schaef shares the richness poured out to her by Native Americans, Aborigines, Africans, Maoris, and others. In the words of Native Peoples themselves, we come to understand Native ideas about our earth, spirituality, family, work, loneliness, and change. For in every area of our lives we have the capacity to transcend our white minds--we simply need to listen with open hearts and open minds to other voices, other perceptions, other cultures.

Anne Wilson Schaef often heard Elders from a wide variety of Native Peoples say, "Our legends tell us that a time will come when our wisdom and way of living will be necessary to save the planet, and that time is now." Anyone ready to move from feeling separate to a profound sense of connectedness, from the personal to the global, will find the path in this mind-expanding, deeply spiritual book.

I couldn't agree more with you yagotta! It's a damn shame the Natives were virtually wiped out by the Europeans...

That sounds like an interesting book, I'm going to look into that. Thanks for sharing

:)

You wish we still lived in the woods and trees with no technology, and we had stayed hunters and gatherers? Interesting...

Are you freaking kidding me?
I hope so. Otherwise, you are seriously ignorant.

OH MY GOD!

I just enjoyed not having to slog through traffic. Does that make me shallow?

Some people are okay with genocide. As long is it isn't "their" people.

I personally believe that those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it.

http://www.ditext.com/zinn/zinn1.html

(from A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, another great book)

Uhhhhh, I think what was done to the Native Americans was horrible too. I think that's just a fact. I have Cherokee ancestry and even though it has never had an impact on me, it breaks my heart to think of how some of my ancestors treated the others, ya know?

But... I hardly think Columbus was solely responsible for all that happened. And I also won't go so far as to say I wish he had never came here. America probably would have been more beautiful, that is true. Of course, it probably wouldn't be America, and most of us would not be here. So I can't really go back and say that I wish it hadn't happened.

I didn't realize this was such a hated holiday. I don't think any country has a purely peachy keen history. People don't acquire lands by being nice and caring. Sad but true. The entire world's history has lots and lots of rough spots, obviously.

Columbus set the stage. When making the natives failed, they went for Africans. Fast forward a few hundred years: there's like 7 Natives left and the blacks are still catching hell.

To say "that how it goes" does a great injustice to the souls that where murdered enslaved and raped out of greed, racism, and fear. All most of us are saying is to accept the ENTIRE history.