By Glynn Cosker
Editor, In Homeland Security
Columbus Day is when we remember and honor the iconic first man to secure our homeland. Or do we? Or should we?
Today is now Indigenous Peoples’ Day in Seattle and Minneapolis, two cities choosing to celebrate the native people Christopher Columbus encountered rather than the explorer himself. They are not the only jurisdictions who walked away from the moniker of Columbus Day. Since 1990, South Dakota has celebrated Native American Day on the second Monday of October. Hawaii celebrates Discoverers’ Day—a call out to the island chain’s Polynesian discoverers.
Historians offer varying accounts of what exactly happened in October 1492. There are many who insist that the only thing Columbus discovered was the fact that he was lost. Plenty of others state that the man was nothing more than a slave master who chopped off the hands, ears, and noses of his gold mining workers—to set an example. There are other still who claim that Columbus secured a continent for generations to come, and without him, there would be no United States of America.
Regardless of where one sits on the debate, one thing is clear. There is a swelling tide of American citizens who think Columbus Day is a joke, the least of all the federal holidays on the calendar. And an even bigger group who see the holiday as an insult to Native Americans.
“The atrocities that Columbus did to American Indians — killing thousands, making slaves out of them — it just doesn’t sit well with the American Indian community,” stated Leigh Jeanotte, director of American Indian Services at University of North Dakota to the Grand Forks Herald.
So, is it time to change the famous song taught to generations of schoolchildren to “Columbus sailed the ocean blue…and slaughtered the natives too?” No.
Columbus Day, first envisioned by President Benjamin Harrison in 1892, will likely endure for another 100 years at least. Should the concept surrounding it become more about educating the masses about the atrocities the Italian explorer inflicted on the people of what is now the Bahamas and less about comparing him with Washington, Lincoln and other famous institutions of our great past? Yes.
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