#columbus day

linguist-breakaribecca:

Thirty Everyday Phrases that Perpetuate the Oppression of Indigenous Peoples

“Language isn’t neutral or objective. It is a vessel of cultural stories, values, and norms. And in the United States, everyday language plays into the violent, foundational myth of this country’s origin story—Europeans ‘discovering’ a virtually uninhabited wilderness and befriending the few primitive peoples who lived there—as well as other cultural myths and lies about Indigenous Peoples that are baked into U.S. culture and everyday life.

Cleve Davis (Shoshone-Bannock) points out that everyday language continues discrimination that is an extension of the centuries-long federal policy of genocide, assimilation, and oppression toward the original peoples of North America.

…

It might seem harmless when your boss mentions the need for a powwow among the company’s executives or an online quiz promises to reveal your spirit animal, but everyday language like this is a result of centuries of violence and continues to perpetuate stereotypes that have real-life impacts on Native communities.”

ForIndigenous Peoples’ Day, 2021

Last Columbus Day, the oatmeal published a comic arguing that we should ditch celebrating Columbus in favor of las Casas, a Spanish priest who preached against the enslavement of and cruelty towards the indigenous people of Latin America. I’m seeing it circulating again, and I just want to voice my discomfort: yes, it’s true that las Casas was a “better” man in the sense that he saw the error of his ways (he spent the first half of his life owning a slave plantation) and became “better.” But, to be fair, the bar for human decency when talking about colonization was set pretty low. He was “better” because he didn’t actively support barbarically enslaving, torturing, and murdering the people of the Americas…not in the sense that he saw them as human beings equal to the Spanish, and deserving of the same rights and protections. On the contrary, las Casas wrote about the natives as though they were simple, docile, and completely childlike, uninterested in wealth and knowledge. He wrote,

God created these simple people without evil and without guile.  They are most obedient and faithful to their natural lords and to the Christians whom they serve.  They are most submissive, patient, peaceful and virtuous.  Nor are they quarrelsome, rancorous, querulous, or vengeful.  Moreover they are more delicate than princes and die easily from work or illness [x].

These writings helped create the basis of the extremely condescending myth of the “noble savage,” which continued for centuries onward.  

The point is, I don’t think we should be celebrating someone for being a bit better than Columbus - we shouldn’t be celebrating any individual connected to Spanish colonization at all. 

My boyfriend: FUCK Columbus

Me:*staring in awe*I’m going to marry this man

Happy Columbo day

Haiti is in strife with an ever rising death poll from Hurricane Matthews and has no resources to aid in the recovery, yet we’re still gonna celebrate Columbus on Monday.
The man who not only drained Hispaniola (modern day Haiti) of its population, but of it’s wealth and natural resources, leaving only disease and colorist behind.
We should use Monday to continue to support Haitian relief organizations and to celebrate the strength of native peoples as they’ve had to endure and overcome since the beginning of history. As it pertains to recognizing Italian American heritage, there are plenty of other figures that we could celebrate with a better history that would truly represent Italian contribution to the Americas. Win-win?

So I like how on Last Week Tonight they did a segment on how Columbus Day really shouldn’t be a thing (and it really shouldn’t) but then proceeded to announce that there would be no episode next week, presumably due to the observance of Columbus Day.