<div dir="ltr"><font face="georgia, serif">Good Morning Visionaries:</font><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">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.</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">Attached is a longer version that appeared in Pocatello's Idaho State Journal this morning.</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">nfg</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><b><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">Replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day<span></span></font></span></b></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><b><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif"> </font></span></b></p>

<p align="center" style="margin:0in 0in 14.1pt;text-align:center;line-height:150%;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;vertical-align:baseline"><font face="georgia, serif"><i><span style="color:black">We discovered Columbus, lost on our shores,
sick, destitute, <br clear="all">
and wrapped in rags. We nourished him to health, and the rest is history.<br clear="all">
He represents the mascot of American colonialism in the Western Hemisphere.<br clear="all">
</span></i><span style="color:black">—Lakota activist Bill Means</span></font></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">            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.  <span></span></font></span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">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.<span></span></font></span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">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.”<span></span></font></span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">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.<span></span></font></span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">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.  <span></span></font></span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="georgia, serif"><span style="color:black">Major
Christian denominations have denounced the Doctrine of Discovery, but the
Vatican has yet has to revoke the papal bulls.</span> In November 2013
the nuns from Denver’s Loretto Community sent a letter to Pope Francis
requesting that he address this issue.  <span></span></font></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="georgia, serif">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.”<span></span></font></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="georgia, serif">            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.” <span></span></font></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%"><span style="color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="georgia, serif">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. <span></span></font></span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%"><span style="color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="georgia, serif">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.<span></span></font></span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%"><font face="georgia, serif"><span style="color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial">In 1990, under pressure from Indian
activists, South Dakota was first state to substitute Native American Day for
Columbus Day. In October </span><span style="color:black">2015 Alaska
followed suit by renaming Columbus Day Indigenous Peoples' Day. <span></span></span></font></p>

<p style="margin:6pt 0in;text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">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.<span></span></font></span></p>

<p style="margin:6pt 0in;text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="georgia, serif"><span style="color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial">In 1992, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley,_California" title="Berkeley, California"><span style="color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;text-decoration:none">Berkeley</span></a>,<span style="color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"> 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.<span></span></span></font></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%"><span style="color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="georgia, serif">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.<span></span></font></span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%"><font face="georgia, serif"><span style="color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial">Nick Gier taught philosophy and religion
at the University of Idaho for 31 years.</span><span style="color:black"><span></span></span></font></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span style="color:black"><span><font face="georgia, serif"> </font></span></span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span style="color:black"><span><font face="georgia, serif"> </font></span></span><span style="font-family:georgia,serif">A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. </span></p><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><font size="2"><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br>-Greek proverb</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br>
“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.<br>
<br>
--Immanuel Kant<br>
<br></font><br></div></font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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