Open thread—Happy Indigenous Peoples Day!
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| Quinn Dombrowski from Berkeley, USA [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)] |
I remember when LA County renamed Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day. For some, it was as if we had murdered their dog. "PC run amok!!! What was so bad about Columbus???"
Four hundred years of genocide. The displacement and destruction of complex civilizations. Environmental rape and pillage. Four centuries of oppression of indigenous peoples. Need I go on?
History is what history is. But Indigenous Peoples Day is a needed corrective to Western triumphalism. It's needed to remind the descendants of the colonizers that there were people here before their ancestors arrived, and that they were displaced to create the civilization which arose. History always comes with a price, usually in blood. It behooves us to acknowledge that and remember it.
Don't mourn Columbus. He made out pretty well. But bow your heads in memory of the people whose destruction he initiated. Such a destruction was inevitable; if it hadn't been Columbus who ran into the Western Hemisphere, it would have been someone else, with probably the same consequences. So celebrate the memories of those who perished and survived, rather than of the conqueror.
This is your open thread.