Every year on Columbus Day we hear of the protests and the parades marking Christopher Columbus. I grew up with Columbus as a hero. But then again George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and others have lost their heroism as well. When I googled Columbus Genocide to find out just what the controversy was all about, beleive me: there were very few postings that were even readable. They were rants and raves without any direct facts at all, there were pieces that tried to sound scholarly but made no sense. Even Wikipedia seemed to have trouble when it came to talking about the "controversy." One main source, it seems, for the genocide accusations, came from none other than Ward Churchill, who has been permanently fired from the University of Colorado for plagarism and lack of scholarly ways. In other words, he is not a credible source.
There is indeed sufficient evidence against Columbus that he treated the natives of Hispaniola like cattle, and indeed that population was nearly wiped out. The only reasonable posting I found was from cartoonist Mikhaela B. Reid in his Boiling Point blog. That is from 2002, but it holds up well. In other words, nothing has changed.
Okay, I guess all our holidays for heroes are outmoded (except perhaps Easter and Christmas, both for the same Palestinian Savior). Should we do away with Martin Luther King day, Caesar Chavez day, and the like? Isn't Labor Day celebrated for Unions? Columbus Day is celebrated on October 12 because it is the day he arrived in the New World, October 12, 1492. It has nothing to do with his birthday or etc. The celebration of the day has brought out the anti-Columbus point of view as well, so maybe we should celebrate the holiday, as others have suggested, as a point of change for all of us. It comes at a time of year when harvest festivals occur, when we are preparing for the Winter that will lead to Spring. What should we name our new holiday?
