Today is the second Monday in October and the day we celebrate the federal holiday honoring Christopher Columbus. Two years ago NewMexiKen posted some thoughts on the matter. Here they are again (with a few inconsequential edits):
NewMexiKen is well aware of the feelings among many American Indians and others about Columbus Day. One Lakota woman who worked for me used to ask if—as a protest—she could come in and work on Columbus Day, a federal holiday.
My feeling is that we can’t have enough holidays and so I choose to think of Columbus Day as the Italian-American holiday. Nothing wrong with that. We have an African-American holiday on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. We have the Irish-American celebration that is St. Patrick’s Day. And Cinco de Mayo is surely the Mexican-American holiday, a much larger celebration here than in most of Mexico.
So, instead of protesting Columbus Day, perhaps American Indians should lobby to bring about a holiday of their own. Given the great diversity among Indian nations, the tribes might never reach agreement, though, so NewMexiKen will suggest a date.
The day before Columbus Day.
As for Columbus himself, a short biography from AmericanHeritage.com begins:
No matter how widely he had been hailed as a hero 14 years before, by 1506, when he died (500 years ago today), Christopher Columbus was all washed up.
Crowds from across Spain lined the streets of Seville in 1493 to welcome him home from his first voyage to the Americas, but he already hadn’t found what he was looking for, a seaway to India’s spice-trade ports. He never would, though the search consumed the rest of his life. A little genocide here, some slavery there, several mutinies, and multiple executions of crew members later, and Columbus fell out of favor with the Spanish crown and the public. When he died he was surrounded by family and by the trappings of his substantial income. But he went to his grave with the gouging sense of injustice he couldn’t forgive and of failure he couldn’t explain.
Perhaps the Italian-Americans should transfer their holiday allegiance to Tony Bennett.
I always refer to Columbus Day as “European Invasion Day.”
A few years ago, a friend of a friend was working as a doctor at the Taos Pueblo and when I found out she had Columbus Day off, I thought it was strange that the American Indians would celebrate (or even commemorate) Columbus Day. Then I realized she wasn’t really working for them; she was working for the US Government (Indian Health Services).