Today is the most strange of the holidays that America celebrates. First, it is a holiday where the only celebration of any kind is a frenzy of sales and specials offered by retailers as they try to dump whatever they haven’t been able to over a similar long weekend at the beginning of September, in preparation for stocking the shelves for the Thanksgiving to Christmas onslaught. But second and more importantly, it is the only holiday where we celebrate our national shame. Not that the terrible genocide that we “Europeans” perpetrated on the native Americans who were here long before our arrival was the fault of Columbus. It took a real collective and protracted effort to do as thorough a job as we have managed over the years.
It reminds me, sadly, of 15 May, where in the same space on this earth Israelis celebrate the creation of their State and Palestinians “celebrate” al-Nakba – the day of the catastrophe. Is it always so that one peoples’ joy is rooted in another’s’ sorrow? Does every celebration of statehood imply almost by definition that there are losers, those who are NOT part of the State – who do not have the privileges of citizenship and either have to leave the territory where they may have lived for centuries or take on some lesser apartheid status? The mess that is Africa today can be largely traced to the 19th century colonial efforts to create States that would satisfy the arrogant greed of European invaders as they tried to somehow regularize the chaos they had created by drawing lines on a map and trading land and lives as though playing some kind of parlor game.
So 12 October should really be a day of sober reflection, of recognizing the beauty and strength of the people from whom we should be seeking forgiveness rather than flaunting any pretense of conquest. Canada gets a little closer to it as they celebrate their Thanksgiving the same day, honoring the good relationships that did exist at least in their idealized memory (though our northern neighbors new arrivals certainly did their share of damage, too ). But I think I’ll shine the light on the October 12 holiday that perhaps does some justice and at least sounds honorable: in Venezuela, today is the day to celebrate el Día de la Resistencia Indígena – the Day of Indigenous Resistance. Doesn’t that sound better than “Columbus Day”?
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October 1, 2012 - Begin
1 comment:
Well spoken, David. I do wonder how indigenios have truly fared in Venezuela, however. In my experiences in Latin America, those people of European bloodlines still control the power structure over the "natives". And Canada's relationship with their First Nations is almost as much a model for shame as our own.
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