Honoring Indigenous Peoples’ Day

Arriving in a New Land

This year, what in some parts of the country is still called Columbus Day, falls on October 8. I was surprised when a chaplain colleague led a short worship in which he praised the explorer, noting his determination, his courage, his indomitable spirit. He celebrated Columbus for chancing upon a country no one else had discovered before.

Of course, while Columbus may have shown great courage and determination when he crossed the ocean in the primitive vessels and with the rudimentary tools they had in those days, he and his crew were not the first people to arrive in North America. We know, for example, that Leif Erikson landed in Newfoundland with his crew of Vikings around the year 1,000. [1] Some have suggested that a monk named Brendan got here first, [2] while others claim that a Chinese explorer named Zheng He reached the Americas in the early 1400s. [3] Archaeological evidence from chicken bones indicate that Polynesian settlers brought their livestock with them when they landed in South America 100 hundred years or more before Columbus. [4]

Still, none of these were first to reach this continent.

The First Native Americans

Off the coast of Alaska, in the middle of the Bering Strait, lies the island of Little Diomedes. A stark place, it is populated by just over 100 people, mostly Inupiaq natives. From their village, they can see across the ocean, about 2.3 miles away, where their sister island sits. Named Big Diomedes, it is part of Russia.

Although today water separates the two islands and their respective continents, around 20,000 years ago an Ice Age lowered sea levels enough that people could walk between them. The islands were but peaks in the stretch of land called Beringia.  Apparently, humans wandered across the land bridge into the Yukon. There, in a place called Bluefish Caves, the archaeologist Jacques Cinq-Mars discovered 24,000-year-old bones that show evidence of human markings. [5] Scholars believe an ice sheet trapped the nomads there for thousands of years before they could make their way east and south to populate the Americas. [6]

Our Human Imperfections

What were these early people like? We don’t know. It appears that their arrival did not benefit the big animals, such as giant sloths, beavers, and bears, mammoths and mastodons. Around the world, wherever humans went, large animals started disappearing. It may be that climate and environmental changes impacted the great beasts more directly than humans, though we don’t know for sure. [7]

We do know that wars were fought between the native tribes, and some kept slaves. Indeed, a new exhibit at the National Museum of the American Indian reveals that some Native Americans not only kept war captives as slaves, but also bought black people. Like Europeans, they owned slaves not just for convenience, but to indicate status and wealth, proving how “civilized” they were. [8]

White Betrayal

Yet even though some natives accepted European values, they were murdered, enslaved, and abused, their land taken from them and their culture denied. Did this make them feel especially betrayed? In her book Killing Rage, bell hooks explains that black anger intensifies in comfortable, middle class black people who suppress their feelings and assimilate into the corporate world so they can gain financial stability. “When they are not treated as equals by the whites they have admired, subordinated their integrity to, they are shocked.” [9] So might the Native Americans have been.

We humans are such tragic creatures. Though kind and generous and helpful in so many situations, we can nonetheless betray, torment, and shatter one another.

The Innocence and Insensitivity of Columbus

This was also true of Christopher Columbus. Surely he did not embark on his adventure with the intention of uprooting individuals, destroying communities, and murdering children. Friends and family thought of him as “good-natured and gentle, discreet and modest.” Ernle Bradford, in his book about Columbus, notes that the man was well loved. [10] His journal shows that, after they landed on Guanahani, as this island in the Bahamas was known to the people who lived there, the explorer was impressed by these Indians who “showed so much friendship” toward them. [11]. He intended only kindness.

Yet, like the seamen who sailed with him, Columbus was a product of his culture. A devout Catholic, he understood that these were pagans who needed to be converted for the safety of their souls. Passion in an ideal and a fervent belief in oneself, can be powerful assets. All those who do great things – who climb mountains, initiate revolutions, build dynasties and corporations, discover life-enhancing medications, save lives, and write constitutions – start with a passionate belief in the possibilities. Often, they are single-minded, determined, and let nothing get in their way.

Such strength of will got Columbus to America. Without this kind of persistence, he would not have been able to keep his crew on course. Even so, once he arrived, it never occurred to him that these brown-skinned individuals might have rights to their own sovereignty. He assumed that his culture, and his language, and his beliefs were best. Therefore, it did not seem strange to him that, as soon as they landed, the Spaniards claimed the land for their king and queen and named Columbus as Viceroy of the community.

The “First Great Sin”

Then Columbus committed what Bradford calls the “first great sin” in this new land. As the explorer himself admits, he “took by force some of the inhabitants.” [12] Wanting guides to explain what they saw, the Europeans dragged the natives from their homes and families without consultation or agreement. This act set a precedent for all that happened at the hands of white settlers from then on. [13]

Such abuses still occur today, and not just to Native Americans. Although the constitution of the United States affirms the worth and dignity of every person and proclaims our right to determine our own lives, our courts and legislature do not always uphold such values. That we humans struggle to treat one another with respect is clear, for though each individual’s dignity is part of our nation’s creed, we still trample one another, honoring wealth and power more than we do our hearts and souls.

I can’t imagine what was like for those first natives to meet Columbus and his men. They seem so innocent, unaware that empires existed where powerful men and women sought ever newer streams of wealth. Yes, the natives fought battles. It wasn’t as if they didn’t know about weapons and death. Yet the large economies of Europe, the power of metal swords and guns, were unknown. Nor did they understand the white men’s insatiable greed, couldn’t imagine that a lust for gold might overwhelm a person’s goodness. How could these islanders have suspected that such men would eventually destroy everything they loved?

If Christopher Columbus started a sequence of events that led to oppression and genocide, should we honor him? Yes, we remember murderers like Hitler and the Borgias, but we don’t celebrate them. So why continue to recognize Columbus with his own special day?

The History of Indigenous Peoples’ Day

The idea of replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day was first talked about in 1977 during the International Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas, held in Switzerland. In 1992, the city of Berkeley announced that October 12 would be a day to promote solidarity with indigenous people. Since then, other cities and states have stopped honoring Columbus and started celebrating our country’s natives. [14]

In “The Federalist,” Michael Graham argues that celebrating Native Americans is worse than remembering Columbus. He states that if we recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day, then we will be commemorating the “horrifying, unspeakable violence and oppression” perpetrated by Native Americans. [15] Yes, natives did keep slaves and tortured their enemies. Yet they also protected the earth, cared for their children, told myths and stories, built strong nations, and loved one. None our heroes is without blemish.

But if no one’s perfect, why not keep celebrating Columbus?

Honoring Those Who Suffered

When we focus on the native people who suffered at the hands of white settlers, we remember Columbus’ first sin and memorialize the lives of those who died. Just like when we honor the Jewish Holocaust and the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, like when we erect a monument to victims of slavery at Mount Vernon, or lists the names of lynching victims in Montgomery, it is important that find a way to remember the harm we have done to Native Americans.

Yes, none of us is without sin. Just as Native Americans are imperfect, so are Jews and the Japanese. Yet these cultures also hold great wisdom and tell sacred stories. They offer gifts of humanity and generosity. From their suffering, they developed strength, integrity, and dignity. But that does not absolve those who caused their suffering, who destroyed their homes and took their independence and their lives. Do we have a Hitler Day? Do we recognize Enola Gay, the pilot who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima? Of course not. Why honor those who began the genocide that still stains our countryside and our society?

Yet in the United States, we are so divided. We cannot bear to face the sins of our past. Unlike Germany, who has made restitution to those harmed in the Holocaust and to their descendants, we cannot agree to provide compensation to families of slaves or of native peoples.

Honoring the Worth and Dignity of Every Person

In many ways, Christopher Columbus was an amazing man. Courageous or crazy, and probably both, he confidently set off across an ocean at a time when star navigation was spotty and his safety was far from guaranteed. But he had a dream, and he followed it. Such passion inspires us.

Yet passion alone is not enough. We also need to respect the worth and dignity of those we meet along the way. It is not okay to get caught up in a religious fervor that brooks no opposition, nor to get lost in our greed. Abuses of power are wrong for native peoples, and also for us. Had the Guanahani natives been as powerful as the Europeans, Columbus would probably not be remembered, for he likely would have been slaughtered. Then someone else would have written the story.

Today, we try to understand our history not only from the standpoint of those who win, but also of those who die.

The Goodness that Comes from Tragedy

Recently, a cousin sent me information about a great-uncle who spent time in Dachau. After being released from that prison, he ended up in a concentration camp in Poland. Paperwork indicates that he survived his ordeal, although what happened to him afterwards, no one knows.

As I reviewed the scanned document my cousin sent me, I felt an odd quiver inside. It wasn’t sadness, exactly, nor was it outrage. Nothing so strong. Maybe I felt some bitterness, though the emotion seemed softer, more like frustration that the world could accept and justify torture and dehumanization then, and especially that we continue to accept this now. Beneath it all, though, I felt a breathless kind of helplessness. Of course, there’s nothing I can do about my great-uncle. What about the people alive today?

To help me understand the deep wounds of genocide on dark-skinned peoples around the world, I think of my family whose members lost their homes, their businesses, their loved ones, and their lives to forces of evil. Their experience wasn’t the same as that of African slaves or slaughtered Indians, of course. All our stories are unique.

Yet pain is pain. None of us go through life without suffering, at least a little bit. Trauma, torture, displacement, dehumanization all leave scars. Depression, addiction, illness, poverty, abuse in society and abuse within families, aggression, and apathy can result. Yet some people escape tragedies with their soul intact. Perhaps they will never again sleep unburdened by shadows, but they discover ways to turn their horrors into something gentle, generous, and good.

Learning from Those Who Have Suffered

Others, like my grandmother, lose their sanity. After all, how many horrors can we read about, hear about, watch, endure before our hearts stop beating or our minds break? Some of us can tolerate less than others.

Yet anything that wears us down can also make us strong and wise. Within both the black and the native cultures we find incredible beauty, dignity, courage, resilience, creativity, generosity, determination, spirituality, and a deep and poignant wisdom about truth, justice, love, and freedom. Even my nasty, broken-hearted grandmother had moments of insight, as when she taught me that even in the face of a painful death from cancer, it is possible to savor each moment, each sunrise, each breath.

So celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day with reverence and respect. Learn from those who have suffered. The winners may be filled with pride at their accomplishments, but those who know how to lose as well as win can teach us far more about living with humility, generosity, peace, and integrity.

In faith and fondness,

Barbara

Credits

1. “Leif Erickson,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leif_Erikson, acessed 10/6/18.
2. Howley, Andrew, “Did St. Brendan Reach North America 500 Years Before the Vikings?,” National Geographic, May 16, 2013, https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2013/05/16/did-st-brendan-reach-north-america-500-years-before-the-vikings/, accessed 10/6/18.
3. Kahn, Joseph, “Who Discovered America? Zheng Who?,” The New York Times, January 17, 206, https://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/world/who-discovered-america-zheng-who.html, accessed 106/18.
4. Whipps, Heather, “Chicken Bones Suggest Polynesians Found America Before Columbus,” Live Science, June 4, 2007, https://www.livescience.com/1567-chicken-bones-suggest-polynesians-americas-columbus.html, accessed 10/6/18.
5. Pringle, Heather, “What Happens When an Archaeologist Challenges Mainstream Thinking?,” Smithsonian.com, March 8, 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/jacques-cinq-mars-bluefish-caves-scientific-progress-180962410/, accessed 10/5/18.
6. Rutherford, Adam, “A New History of the First Peoples in the Americas,” The Atlantic, Science, October 2, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/10/a-brief-history-of-everyone-who-ever-lived/537942/, accessed 10/5/18.
7. Balter, Michael, “What Killed the Great Beasts of North America?,” Science, January 28, 2014, https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/01/what-killed-great-beasts-north-america, accessed 10/6/18 and Yong, Ed, “In a Few Centuries, Cows Could Be the Largest Land Animals Left,” The Atlantic, Science, April 19, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/in-a-few-centuries-cows-could-be-the-largest-land-animals-left/558323/, accessed 10/5/18.
8. Smith, Ryan P., “How Native American Slaveholders Complicate the Trail of Tears Narrative,” Smithsonian, March 6, 2018, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-native-american-slaveholders-complicate-trail-tears-narrative-180968339/, accessed 10/6/18.
9. hooks, bell, Killing Rage, New York: Holt Paperbacks, 1995, 28.
10. Bradford, Ernle. Christopher Columbus, Open Road Media, 2014, 62.
11. Ibid 116.
12. Columbus’s journal, as quoted by Bradford 120.
13. Bradford 120.
14. “Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Peoples%27_Day, accessed 10/5/18.
15. Graham, Michael, “Why ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Day’ Is Far Worse than Columbus Day,” The Federalist, Fdrlst Media, October 9, 2017, http://thefederalist.com/2017/10/09/indigenous-peoples-day-far-worse-columbus-day/, accessed 10/5/18.

Painting by Christian Krohg, 1893 – in the public domain, published on WIkimedia

Copyright © 2018 Barbara E. Stevens