[Vision2020] Replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People's Day

[Nicholas Gier]

Good Morning Visionaries:

For those who don't take the Daily News, here is my column from yesterday.
Columbus and his fellow Christian terrorists should be relegated to the
trash heap of history.

Attached is a longer version that appeared in Pocatello's Idaho State
Journal this morning.

nfg

*Replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day*






*We discovered Columbus, lost on our shores, sick, destitute, and wrapped
in rags. We nourished him to health, and the rest is history. He represents
the mascot of American colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. *—Lakota
activist Bill Means

            May 4, 1493 was a day of infamy for the indigenous peoples of
the Americas. At the urging of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain,
Pope Alexander VI confirmed their right to confiscate all native peoples’
lands.

Even at this point in time, the Christian conquest of the world had been
well under way. Alexander’s papal bull was a continuation of what is now
called the Doctrine of Discovery. The irony of “discovering” land on which
people already flourished is a sad and tragic one.

In 1455 Pope Nicholas V exhorted Catholic rulers to conquer, even those “in
the remotest parts unknown to us,” all who were enemies of Christ.  The
Pope gave them permission “to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and
subdue all Saracens [Muslims] and pagans,” take their possessions, and
“reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.”

Although Pope Nicholas acknowledged that native Americans were innocent,
peace loving people, Columbus and others treated them with wanton
brutality.  It was Christian terrorism pure and simple.

North America’s native population also came under the Doctrine of
Discovery. In 1823 Chief Justice John Marshall concluded that the U. S. had
derived its right of “dominion” from Great Britain as the nation who
“discovered” and settled “unoccupied” land.  As a result, America’s
“heathen” natives had lost “their rights to complete sovereignty” and must
live as dependent nations within the U.S.

Major Christian denominations have denounced the Doctrine of Discovery, but
the Vatican has yet has to revoke the papal bulls. In November 2013 the
nuns from Denver’s Loretto Community sent a letter to Pope Francis
requesting that he address this issue.

In their letter the sisters praised him and two previous popes for
supporting the U. N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Francis has also offered forgiveness for “crimes committed against the
native peoples during the so-called conquest of America.”

            The Loretto sisters have received no response, except from the
U. S. Conference of Bishops who thanked them for sending them a copy of the
letter. In 2007 Archbishop Celestino Migliore did respond to an earlier
inquiry. He wrote that subsequent papal bulls had forbidden the enslavement
of Indians and there was “no need to take further action.”

Over the past six decades, six states have taken the lead in honoring
America’s indigenous peoples. In 1968 Governor Ronald Reagan signed a
resolution making American Indian Day a state holiday in California. It is
held on the fourth Friday of September.

Tennessee also celebrates American Indian Day, but on the fourth Monday of
September. On the same day last month Nevada celebrated the holiday for the
first time.

In 1990, under pressure from Indian activists, South Dakota was first state
to substitute Native American Day for Columbus Day. In October 2015 Alaska
followed suit by renaming Columbus Day Indigenous Peoples' Day.

On October 10, 2016, recognizing that “the Green Mountain State was founded
and built upon lands first inhabited by indigenous people,” Vermont
Governor Peter Shumlin proclaimed that the second Monday in October would
now be celebrated as Indigenous People's Day.

In 1992, Berkeley <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley,_California>,
California was the first city to substitute Indigenous Peoples’ Day for
Columbus Day, and since then 31 cities have done the same. Phoenix, Arizona
has been the largest city to acknowledge that Columbus should not be
honored for his genocidal attacks on America’s natives.

It is high time for Congress to declare the second Monday in October a
national holiday honoring America’s native people. Columbus and his fellow
terrorists should be relegated to the trash heap of history.

Nick Gier taught philosophy and religion at the University of Idaho for 31
years.



 A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they
shall never sit in.

-Greek proverb

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in
lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant
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