This article was actually something we were going to post yesterday, but weebly was updating their servers so toward the end of the day, we couldn't post. So, here you go now:

Some Thoughts on Columbus Day
By Laura Patsouris

"In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue"...

  There is so much history we are not taught. We are not taught about the rich cultures that were destroyed in the Conquest, we are led to believe that Columbus "discovered" the Americas when it already had a population of 100 million inhabitants. We are not shown the lithographs and artwork done *by Spaniards* documenting how they tortured and murdered Arawak, Caribe and Taino people and hacked up the limbs of the women and children to sell as *meat* to feed their hunting dogs. Instead we get a whitewashed version of history that glorifies Conquest and "Manifest Destiny" and gloss over inconvenient facts about genocide and slavery.

  The truth of the story is ugly. The truth is painful. But the only way to heal the pain and wounds of the past is to look it square in the eye. Because whether you are descended from the Conquerors or the Natives or the enslaved Africans on whose backs the Americas were built,(or if you're descended from all those groups combined like me) this is your History. You live in a land steeped in blood, whose soil holds the bones and the stories of all these people. Looking away and trying to think pretty thoughts will not undo reality or lance wounds that have festered. If we are all truly the walking incarnations of our ancestral lines (as I believe we are) then we are obligated to look at the past honestly and mourn it, lest we repeat those terrible errors.

  Atrocities happened. And we have inherited a world built on its foundations. The question now is, what are we going to do with it?



From Galina: Here is an excellent article (hosted by MIT) on Columbus’ Legacy of Genocide: http://www.mit.edu/~thistle/v9/9.11/1columbus.html

And from Ukumbwa, another good suggestion for this particular day: we should boycott companies that hold Columbus day sales.

With just a half hour to go on this joyous Criminal Columbus day.......yet more clarity and a call to serious action from Cultural Survival and their Global Response program:

END COLUMBUS DAY

"Greetings to all our friends,

Each year the recognition of Columbus Day places Indigenous Peoples in a painfully uncomfortable position. In the year 2011, as Native people in this country, we still must explain our feelings about a historically inaccurate, national holiday.

     
The fact that Christopher Columbus did not "discover" America seems to fall on deaf ears. The fact that his landing on our soil did usher in over 500 years of greed, death, and degradation of unprecedented magnitude also eludes otherwise attentive ears. So, once again, as Native people, we confront another year of educating those who insist that Columbus is a figure worthy of national adoration.

     
We ask that on this Columbus Day, a reflection of historical facts be observed. By the time European colonizers arrived, Indigenous people had already been on this continent for more than 20,000 years. We were farmers, scientists, astronomers, artists, mathematicians, singers, architects, physicians, teachers, mother, fathers, and Elders living in sophisticated societies.


These societies lacked nothing and had everything to give in the way of wisdom and knowledge. We object to a false and hurtful holiday that perpetuates a vision of a land open to conquest of its Native inhabitants, their highly evolved societies, and natural resources.  We stand in solidarity with the call to transform Columbus Day by not recognizing and honoring the day as Columbus Day.

Suzanne Benally (Navajo and Santa Clara Tewa)

Executive Director"

Open Letter to Urban Outfitters on Columbus Day

Here is part of the letter, please see the link for the rest at Indian Country Today Media Network. 

"Urban Outfitters Inc. has taken Indigenous life ways and artistic expressions and trivialized and sexualized them for the sake of corporate profit. Your company also perpetuates the worst stereotype of Indians. This is theft of our very cultural identity, no less so than the theft of our traditional homelands that began with Columbus’ “discovery” of the Americas. On this day that America still celebrates as Columbus Day, I ask that do what is morally right and apologize to Indigenous peoples of North America and withdraw this offensive line from retail stores."

Right on!

We’re going to have another ‘did you know’ moment with your indigenous hosts, because apparently a few truths bear repeating:

1. Columbus did not discover America. The Americas were already here populated by hundreds of indigenous First Nations. You heard me right: nations, as in independent cultures, economies, and governments. Columbus didn’t discover shit.
2. What Columbus did do was usher in over 500 years of greed, colonialism, enslavement, degradation, and cultural genocide all of which continued into our modern day, and continues to impact this country and its indigenous peoples in negative ways.
3. The indigenous cultures that populated the Americas prior to the arrival of Columbus and his crew were highly developed, rich, complex, and intelligent. They were men and women, mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers living in sophisticated societies practicing their ancestral religions that were in no way “primitive” or in need of forced Christianization, colonization, and destruction.
4. Historically, the Norse, Polynesians, possibly the Celts all arrived in America hundreds of years before Columbus. They did not feel the need to destroy and enslave what they found.
5. Columbus was a bad navigator. He was looking for India. Seriously, people.
6. If Columbus were alive today, he very likely would find himself on trial for crimes against humanity.
7. Among his less than stellar crimes, was the wholesale selling of girls as young as ten into sexual slavery. Apparently, raping children was a popular hobby amongst the conquistadors. (Columbus, by the way, records this trade in his diary so we have it from his own hand).
8. Columbus was actually arrested during his lifetime, specifically because of his wanton cruelty toward natives. The king and queen of Spain, however, pardoned him. He was bringing in too much cash to the crown.
9. When Columbus arrived in Hispaniola, the population numbered about 3 Million people. Within fifty years, it numbered less than sixty thousand. That’s 3,000,000.00 to less than 60,000.00. Do the math.
10. By honoring Columbus, we as a nation are giving our tacit seal of approval on the horrors perpetrated as a result of his arrival.

Happy Columbus Day? Um…no.

If you'd like to know the true story about Christopher Columbus, ...please read on. But I warn you, it's not for the faint of heart.

Here's the basics. On the second Monday in October each year, we celebrate Columbus Day (this year, it's on October 10th). We teach our school kids a cute little song that goes: "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue." It's an American tradition, as American as pizza pie. Or is it? Surprisingly, the true story of Christopher Columbus has very little in common with the myth we all learned in school.

Columbus Day, as we know it in the United States, was invented by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal service organization. Back in the 1930s, they were looking for a Catholic hero as a role-model their kids could look up to. In 1934, as a result of lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, Congress and President Franklin Roosevelt signed Columbus Day into law as a federal holiday to honor this courageous explorer. Or so we thought.

There are several problems with this. First of all, Columbus wasn't the first European to discover America. As we all know, the Viking, Leif Ericson probably founded a Norse village on Newfoundland some 500 years earlier. So, hat's off to Leif. But if you think about it, the whole concept of discovering America is, well, arrogant. After all, the Native Americans discovered North America about 14,000 years before Columbus was even born! Surprisingly, DNA evidence now suggests that courageous Polynesian adventurers sailed dugout canoes across the Pacific and settled in South America long before the Vikings.

Second, Columbus wasn't a hero. When he set foot on that sandy beach in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492, Columbus discovered that the islands were inhabited by friendly, peaceful people called the Lucayans, Taínos and Arawaks. Writing in his diary, Columbus said they were a handsome, smart and kind people. He noted that the gentle Arawaks were remarkable for their hospitality. "They offered to share with anyone and when you ask for something, they never say no," he said. The Arawaks had no weapons; their society had neither criminals, prisons nor prisoners. They were so kind-hearted that Columbus noted in his diary that on the day the Santa Maria was shipwrecked, the Arawaks labored for hours to save his crew and cargo. The native people were so honest that not one thing was missing.

Columbus was so impressed with the hard work of these gentle islanders, that he immediately seized their land for Spain and enslaved them to work in his brutal gold mines. Within only two years, 125,000 (half of the population) of the original natives on the island were dead.

If I were a Native American, I would mark October 12, 1492, as a black day on my calendar.

Shockingly, Columbus supervised the selling of native girls into sexual slavery. Young girls of the ages 9 to 10 were the most desired by his men. In 1500, Columbus casually wrote about it in his log. He said: "A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand."

He forced these peaceful natives work in his gold mines until they died of exhaustion. If an "Indian" worker did not deliver his full quota of gold dust by Columbus' deadline, soldiers would cut off the man's hands and tie them around his neck to send a message. Slavery was so intolerable for these sweet, gentle island people that at one point, 100 of them committed mass suicide. Catholic law forbade the enslavement of Christians, but Columbus solved this problem. He simply refused to baptize the native people of Hispaniola.

On his second trip to the New World, Columbus brought cannons and attack dogs. If a native resisted slavery, he would cut off a nose or an ear. If slaves tried to escape, Columbus had them burned alive. Other times, he sent attack dogs to hunt them down, and the dogs would tear off the arms and legs of the screaming natives while they were still alive. If the Spaniards ran short of meat to feed the dogs, Arawak babies were killed for dog food.

Columbus' acts of cruelty were so unspeakable and so legendary - even in his own day - that Governor Francisco De Bobadilla arrested Columbus and his two brothers, slapped them into chains, and shipped them off to Spain to answer for their crimes against the Arawaks. But the King and Queen of Spain, their treasury filling up with gold, pardoned Columbus and let him go free.

One of Columbus' men, Bartolome De Las Casas, was so mortified by Columbus' brutal atrocities against the native peoples, that he quit working for Columbus and became a Catholic priest. He described how the Spaniards under Columbus' command cut off the legs of children who ran from them, to test the sharpness of their blades. According to De Las Casas, the men made bets as to who, with one sweep of his sword, could cut a person in half. He says that Columbus' men poured people full of boiling soap. In a single day, De Las Casas was an eye witness as the Spanish soldiers dismembered, beheaded, or raped 3000 native people. "Such inhumanities and barbarisms were committed in my sight as no age can parallel," De Las Casas wrote. "My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature that now I tremble as I write."

De Las Casas spent the rest of his life trying to protect the helpless native people. But after a while, there were no more natives to protect. Experts generally agree that before 1492, the population on the island of Hispaniola probably numbered above 3 million. Within 20 years of Spanish arrival, it was reduced to only 60,000. Within 50 years, not a single original native inhabitant could be found.

In 1516, Spanish historian Peter Martyr wrote: "... a ship without compass, chart, or guide, but only following the trail of dead Indians who had been thrown from the ships could find its way from the Bahamas to Hispaniola."

Christopher Columbus derived most of his income from slavery, De Las Casas noted. In fact, Columbus was the first slave trader in the Americas. As the native slaves died off, they were replaced with black slaves. Columbus' son became the first African slave trader in 1505.

Are you surprised you never learned about any of this in school? I am too. Why do we have this extraordinary gap in our American ethos? Columbus himself kept detailed diaries, as did some of his men including De Las Casas and Michele de Cuneo. (If you don't believe me, just Google the words Columbus, sex slave, and gold mine.)

Columbus' reign of terror is one of the darkest chapters in our history. The REAL question is: Why do we celebrate a holiday in honor of this man? (Take three deep breaths. If you're like me, your stomach is heaving at this point. I'm sorry. Sometimes the truth hurts. That said, I'd like to turn in a more positive direction.)

Call me crazy, but I think holidays ought to honor people who are worthy of our admiration, true heroes who are positive role models for our children. If we're looking for heroes we can truly admire, I'd like to offer a few candidates. Foremost among them are school kids.

Let me tell you about some school kids who are changing the world. I think they are worthy of a holiday. My friend Nan Peterson is the director of the Blake School, a K-12 school in Minnesota. She recently visited Kenya. Nan says there are 33 million people in Kenya... and 11 million of them are orphans! Can you imagine that? She went to Kibera, the slum outside Nairobi, and a boy walked up to her and handed her a baby. He said: My father died. My mother died... and I'm not feeling so good myself. Here, take my sister. If I die, they will throw her into the street to die.

There are so many orphans in Kenya, the baby girls are throwaways!

Nan visited an orphanage for girls. The girls were starving to death. They had one old cow that only gave one cup of milk a day. So each girl only got ONE TEASPOON of milk a day!

After this heartbreaking experience, Nan went home to her school in Minnesota and asked the kids... what can we do? The kids got the idea to make homemade paper and sell it to buy a cow. So they made a bunch of paper, and sold the paper, and when they were done they had enough money to buy... FOUR COWS! And enough food to feed all of the cows for ONE FULL YEAR! These are kids... from 6 years old to 18... saving the lives of kids halfway around the world. And I thought: If a 6-year-old could do that... what could I do?

At Casady School in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, seemingly "average" school kids raised $20,000 to dig clean water wells for children in Ethiopia. These kids are heroes. Why don't we celebrate "Kids Who Are Changing the Planet" Day?

Let me ask you a question: Would we celebrate Columbus Day if the story of Christopher Columbus were told from the point-of-view of his victims? No way!

The truth about Columbus is going to be a hard pill for some folks to swallow. Please, don't think I'm picking on Catholics. All the Catholics I know are wonderful people. I don't want to take away their holiday or their hero. But if we're looking for a Catholic our kids can admire, the Catholic church has many, many amazing people we could name a holiday after. How about Mother Teresa day? Or St. Francis of Assisi day? Or Betty Williams day (another Catholic Nobel Peace Prize winner). These men and women are truly heroes of peace, not just for Catholics, but for all of us.

Let's come clean. Let's tell the truth about Christopher Columbus. Let's boycott this outrageous holiday because it honors a mass murderer. If we skip the cute song about "In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue," I don't think our first graders will miss it much, do you? True, Columbus' brutal treatment of peaceful Native Americans was so horrific... maybe we should hide the truth about Columbus until our kids reach at least High School age. Let's teach it to them about the same time we tell them about the Nazi death camps.

~~~~~~

Thank you, Gray Wolf.

http://www.facebook.com/ukumbwa/posts/10150341767265768?notif_t=feed_comment#!/photo.php?fbid=292733037404903&set=a.292850964059777.82466.254587994552741&&theater

the original article is here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-kasum/columbus-day-a-bad-idea_b_742708.html

Asante, barka, jerejef, thank you to the Ancestors who fought against the genocidal mania of Criminal Columbus and the death, destruction and violent sexism he would institutionalize, to all those who fought the very christian enslavers on the shores of Africa, on the boats that would so horrendously kidnap them and on the shores of the Americas, Turtle Island and to this very day.  Asante for your resistance to madness, knowing that balance and harmony in the world was and is possible because you helped create and sustain it.  Wakale, Ancestors, help us gain clarity and fortitude to stand up for the rights and dignity of all humanity and, particularly, on this day to speak powerfully in validation of YOU, of all indigenous Ancestors who have given us traditions of spiritual clarity, of healing, of grounded and informed understanding of our sacred place in this sacred world.  Asante sana, Wakale!  Asante!  Barka!

A very thoughful video: http://www.examiner.com/progressive-in-washington-dc/reconsider-columbus-day

because really, given the consequences of his arrival in the Americas,  celebrating columbus day is like celebrating Adolf Hitler day. Seriously.

I (Galina) recently learned from one of my students that there is a push in some circles to rename Columbus Day, Indigenous Peoples’ Day. This apparently (and unbeknownst to me) began in Geneva, Switzerland  in 1977 at a UN conference on exploitation and oppression of indigenous peoples in the Americans. I’m very grateful to my student for alerting me to this. A name change is a start. Granted, it’s nowhere near enough. It’s not enough to pay lip service to the idea of indigenous rights. There must, in some way, be apology and reparation. Moreover, the continued oppression of indigeny must be stopped.

The story of the ‘discovery’ of America is a story of greed, religious fanaticism, and conquest. This type of conquest began with the destruction of European indigenous traditions. First, monotheism in the form of Christianity spread from the Mediterranean into Europe. It fostered the forced eradication of indigenous religions and spiritual traditions. It brutally changed the cultural paradigm and destroyed and then replaced the dominant operating “filter.” Then, having succumbed and in some cases learned to collaborate in the destruction of their own ways, Europeans, in some weird cultural Stockholm syndrome, came across the ocean and did exactly the same thing to the Native nations here. Like any cycle of abuse, it just kept on going.

It’s about time we as a people and a nation take a good long look at where that cycle has brought us, because we can change it and it begins with little steps, sometimes seemingly insignificant ones. It begins with examining our own filters and being willing to admit our privilege. That’s no small thing but it is an essential starting point.

This is one of the reasons that ancestor work, honoring our dead, is such a vital step right now. They can help. We all have ancestors who lived through these times of conquest. We all have ancestors who lived organically those traditions that were destroyed. Even those ancestors who knew only monotheism can help us, for often with death and contact with elder kin, greater understanding and awareness is gained. They can help us all remove the destructive filter that has become our baseline operating system. We need only honor them and ask. There is a Lithuanian proverb: “the souls of the dead are the guardians of the living” and that is so very, very true. Especially here. Especially now. We cannot afford to forget that. The tremendous lack of balance in our world is going to take both sides living and dead working in tandem to correct. The souls of the dead truly are the guardians of the living. Honor them.

In the meantime, think about what you can do to honor your own indigenous roots, to honor the Native cultures of this land, and to begin to enter into this fight, which is, as a colleague of mine recently called it, a fight for the soul of this nation. It doesn’t matter how small the action. Something is always better than nothing and we all have to start somewhere. Here are a few simple ideas:

Nine things that you can do instead of celebrating Criminal Columbus Day:

1.       Hold a ritual honoring the land, Turtle Island, her spirit, and the ancestors of this place. Pour or lay out offerings.

2.       This one is just for the DC40 folks, who are horrified by the idea of Goddesses who hold the title “The Queen of Heaven.” Hold a ritual honoring one of those Goddesses. Set up a small shrine and maintain a regular devotional practice. (More on the current attack on the “Queen of Heaven” in a day or so. It is going hand in hand with these predators’ attack on religious freedom, human intelligence, and Turtle Island) and it’s a part of many ancient traditions, a part that was early, often, and vociferously attacked. Let’s take it back.

3.       This was another suggestion that I got from my student: several states (New Mexico, South Dakota, Alabama and Hawaii) have renamed Columbus Day. Do some research and find out if there has been any movement to do so in your state. If not, start one.

4.       Go visit a local Native American museum (like the Museum of the American Indian in NYC). Educate yourself about First Nations’ peoples and cultures. If you have children, take them along.

5.       Push for and/or organize a presentation in your local school touching on indigenous cultures and the real story of Columbus. Bring in Native presenters (because their story is not anyone else’s narrative to tell).

6.       Take this a step further and (again a suggestion from my student) push to find out what children are learning about in school about Columbus and the Conquest of the Americas. This book can provide useful resources: http://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Columbus-Next-500-Years/dp/094296120X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318217963&sr=8-1

7.       Have a movie night and discussion with friends and acquaintances. Choose something like “Rabbit Proof Fence,” (not American, but a story of horrors perpetrated against Australian aborigine tribes. They got the idea from the Americas).  “Incident at Oglala,” “Columbus Day Legacy,” or, if you want to talk about the destruction of European traditions, ‘Agora.” There are many good and pointed films on the market, these were just a few that came immediately to mind that might prove somewhat salient on the topic of destruction of indigeny.

8.       If you haven’t begun honoring your ancestors regularly, now is a good time and excuse to begin. There are several good articles here: Http://krasskova.weebly.com/blog/html under the tag ‘ancestors’ that can get you started.

9.       Donate to Cultural Survival at http://www.culturalsurvival.org. This organization’s specific goal is the protection, preservation, and growth of indigenous cultures as well as fighting for their rights.

  A big thank you to C.A. for some of the above suggestions and many blessings to you all.

We received the following submission from artist and illustrator Barbara Kring. It’s offered here as a meditation on the damage we have done to our earth. It is possible to restore and renew our world, but it takes awareness, effort, and a willingness to face down our own post-Conquest filter.

 

 

To the Goddess of the Earth

By Barbara Kring

The goddess looked upon her children and smiled,
Walking hand and hand into paradise.
The breeze was her whisper,
Her laugher echoed in the rushing waters.
With the Earth as her form she sat with us,
Teaching us her wisdom, her hopes, and dreams.
The fire sat within her heart to protect us from harm,
For a time letting no harm to come to her children.

Now the goddess cannot smile as she once did,
Standing upon the ashes of the land she once walked.
The breeze is now her cries of sadness,
The streams once clean now acrid and filled with tears.
The Earth has been ravaged and honoring it has been forgotten,
The goddesse's teachings are now lost, her hopes dashes, dreams forgotten,
The fire still looms within her heart but her warmth has been ignored.
In this time she is ravaged, abused, and forgotten.

We as children of the goddess must again look to her again,
Walk again in her footsteps and recreate paradise.
To fill the air with her praise and love,
Open our ears to the words of the goddess again.
Teaching the wisdom passed down from her, to reclaim our past and future.
That fire must be turned to protect the mother who has protected us from harm,
To once again hear her whisper in the breeze, and to walk hand and hand with her.

All the titles really do relate to the same thing and though it's an issue that gets raised in relationship to DC40's homogenizing and hegemonic intentions, but was also called for since the monotheistic and capitalist/imperialist/colonialist attacks on indigeny and energetics, the sum total of spiritual ideologies, technologies and practices of indigeny.  DC40 is a neo-missionary, neo-manifest destiny, neo-discovery doctrine movement that seeks to minimize, if not destroy the harmonious energetic of indigenous and pagan spirituality.  This, again, is in no way new to us, clearly not new to indigenous people all around the world.

The call here is for us to take space in the world with confidence and authority.  If we truly are empowered and liberated by the pagan and indigenous traditions of our Ancestors, many who fought valiantly and with their life to sustain those traditions and cultures, we must find ways to mover forward in our full power and make space for indigeny no matter what the responses of the mainstream are.  I am reminded that indigenous spiritual traditions WERE the mainstream at one point in human history, the global mainstream.  There are so many reasons why we can carry our respective medicine with pride and fortitude, no matter what the bible-thumpers, intellectual agnostics or terminal secularists say or do. 

We owe it to our Ancestors and to ourselves and to our children, the next seven generations (at least) to carry forward with clear and assured authority the traditions that we hold dear and near to our hearts.  We owe it to the world to bring new foundation to the old foundation of life and human relationship to All That Is.  We must not now and not ever shrink away from our Ancestral mandate to be who and what we have been called to be on this Earth, this sacred, living, breathing, sentient Earth.

I call upon us all to engage this Turtle Island Initiative in the spirit of our Ancestors who fought so hard so that we could be here in this moment at this time with the amazing and powerful, love-filled traditions they left for us to breathe new life into.  Even without the madness of DC40, our Ancestors are calling us to the just that.

With great love and respect,
Walk strong,
Ukumbwa

My colleague Alan Leddon sent me the following piece, in support of the Turtle Island Initiative and I am happy to share it with you here. Let us call to the Gods and spirits of this land, to rise up in protection of its people. 


Hu Nonp (Lakota)
by Alan Leddon

Hu Nonp (“Two Legs”) is the Lakota Bear God. Great Bear learned all of the secrets of the Gods by listening to them while pretending to be asleep (following the Bear Myth here by entering a symbolic underworld and gaining wisdom). Great Bear approached the Pte and offered a deal which led to them making a rattle and drum. After dancing for the Gods, which pleased them, Great Bear received the name Hu Nonp as well as His warm fur coat. He then went on to teach the Pte how a good chief leads his people.

Later, it was decided that Great Bear was the wisest of Gods, but had been denied His due because the other Gods were selfish. This led to Hu Nonp being made the God of Wisdom with a degree of pomp and circumstance, and He was likewise made the God of medicine and sorcery, and protector of all magicians, medicine men and shamans. Additionally, because He had so cleverly learned the secrets of all of the Gods, He became an advisor to Tetanka. ----from Religion Laid Bear, by Alan Leddon

In this time when America is beset by enemies, both foreign and domestic, it seems only fitting that we look to an authentic North American deity. Hu Nonp is no doubt a formidable warrior owing to His Ursine nature, but he solves his problems through the use of his potent brain.  In our current struggles, we need such wisdom and leadership.  

Hu Nonp Invocation
 
(Facing the American Midwest, with either lived or canned drumming, sing out the following, swaying to the beat):

Protector of those who have won magic’s secrets!
God of Wisdom! God of Medicine! God of Sorcery!
Protector of the Servants of the Gods!
I dance to please all the Gods!
I dance to please You, Two Legs!

Let my song be a breeze to pleasantly ruffle your hard won fur!
Let the breeze bring your wisdom to me!
Let me awake with your wisdom like honey on my tongue!
Let your wisdom guide my words and deeds!
Teach Me to Lead!

Let me make matters better for my brothers and sisters!
I thank you, Two Legs!

(A gift of tobacco, honey, or berries can be offered with this invocation).