My cell phone has a calendar function in it where I can store reminders of things I need to do each day in the future. This calendar also comes preloaded with important annual holidays. When Monday, October 14 came up as the next version of "today", I looked at what had been preloaded into my calendar by the cell phone's vendor, and was sadly but amusingly surprised at the display. 2 different holidays were both occurring on this same day, and they were (1) Columbus Day (I expected this one) and (2) Indigenous Peoples' Day. I never knew before that Indigenous Peoples had an annual holiday in their honor in the United States, so I did some research. I read the Wikipedia article on "Indigenous People's Day" and learned the following:
"[It] is an official city and state holiday in various localities. It began as a counter-celebration held on the same day as the U.S. federal holiday of Columbus Day, which honors Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. It is celebrated as an alternative to Columbus Day, citing the lasting harm Indigenous tribes suffered because of Columbus's contributions to the European colonization of the Americas.
The roots of the holiday can be traced back to discussions and propositions regarding instituting it as a replacement for Columbus Day that took place in 1977 during The International NGO [non-government organizations] Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas in Geneva, Switzerland. In 2021, Joe Biden formally commemorated the holiday with a presidential proclamation, becoming the first U.S. president to do so, and presidential proclamations have also been issued in 2022 and 2023. Indigenous Peoples’ Day is not a recognized holiday under U.S. Federal Law."
There is a growing movement to replace the celebration of Christopher Columbus's discovery of the western hemisphere with reminding people of what Columbus did after his discovery. His history here in the western hemisphere was extremely sad and brutal. Also, he only discovered various Caribbean islands but never discovered any place which is now a part of the USA, aka America. Details of his sad and brutal rule in the Caribbean are easily found in Wikipedia's biography of him.
If Columbus had not discovered the western hemisphere, I may or may not have been born 450 years later in Abington, Pennsylvania as a descendant of English colonists who arrived in 1630 in what is now Connecticut, but I would have been born somewhere, and certainly some other European explorer would have stumbled upon our continent a few years after Columbus did in 1492.
I join with those who mourn what Columbus did after landing on an island in the Bahamas. His deeds in the New World were so inhumanely vicious that the Catholic Church back in Spain excommunicated him. "Civilized" nations (i.d., European nations) have grown much nicer since 1492, but there are still many butchers on earth killing large numbers of innocent people who are called "enemies" by the governments of those butchers.
Thanks Bill. Yes, you and I are beneficiaries of the "discovery" of the Western hemisphere. Our forefathers stole a rich continent. :) Yes, it is grim stuff, and yes, if it was not Columbus, it would have been another European "explorer." Europeans became Mongols in boats and caused the greatest demographic catastrophes in the human journey, which was the worst in the Western Hemisphere.
An amazing bit of irony:
My cell phone has a calendar function in it where I can store reminders of things I need to do each day in the future. This calendar also comes preloaded with important annual holidays. When Monday, October 14 came up as the next version of "today", I looked at what had been preloaded into my calendar by the cell phone's vendor, and was sadly but amusingly surprised at the display. 2 different holidays were both occurring on this same day, and they were (1) Columbus Day (I expected this one) and (2) Indigenous Peoples' Day. I never knew before that Indigenous Peoples had an annual holiday in their honor in the United States, so I did some research. I read the Wikipedia article on "Indigenous People's Day" and learned the following:
"[It] is an official city and state holiday in various localities. It began as a counter-celebration held on the same day as the U.S. federal holiday of Columbus Day, which honors Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. It is celebrated as an alternative to Columbus Day, citing the lasting harm Indigenous tribes suffered because of Columbus's contributions to the European colonization of the Americas.
The roots of the holiday can be traced back to discussions and propositions regarding instituting it as a replacement for Columbus Day that took place in 1977 during The International NGO [non-government organizations] Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas in Geneva, Switzerland. In 2021, Joe Biden formally commemorated the holiday with a presidential proclamation, becoming the first U.S. president to do so, and presidential proclamations have also been issued in 2022 and 2023. Indigenous Peoples’ Day is not a recognized holiday under U.S. Federal Law."
There is a growing movement to replace the celebration of Christopher Columbus's discovery of the western hemisphere with reminding people of what Columbus did after his discovery. His history here in the western hemisphere was extremely sad and brutal. Also, he only discovered various Caribbean islands but never discovered any place which is now a part of the USA, aka America. Details of his sad and brutal rule in the Caribbean are easily found in Wikipedia's biography of him.
If Columbus had not discovered the western hemisphere, I may or may not have been born 450 years later in Abington, Pennsylvania as a descendant of English colonists who arrived in 1630 in what is now Connecticut, but I would have been born somewhere, and certainly some other European explorer would have stumbled upon our continent a few years after Columbus did in 1492.
I join with those who mourn what Columbus did after landing on an island in the Bahamas. His deeds in the New World were so inhumanely vicious that the Catholic Church back in Spain excommunicated him. "Civilized" nations (i.d., European nations) have grown much nicer since 1492, but there are still many butchers on earth killing large numbers of innocent people who are called "enemies" by the governments of those butchers.
Thanks Bill. Yes, you and I are beneficiaries of the "discovery" of the Western hemisphere. Our forefathers stole a rich continent. :) Yes, it is grim stuff, and yes, if it was not Columbus, it would have been another European "explorer." Europeans became Mongols in boats and caused the greatest demographic catastrophes in the human journey, which was the worst in the Western Hemisphere.