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The Cincinnati Beacon
Happy Indigenous Rights Day? 83 Arrested at Columbus Day Protest in Denver
Monday, October 08, 2007
Posted by Justin Jeffre
 Photo courtesy of here.
This Saturday 83 protesters were arrested after demonstrators blocked the city’s annual Columbus Day parade. Prior to their arrests, protesters poured fake blood on the streets to represent the genocide of indigenous people that began after Columbus sailed to the Americas.
(The first Columbus Day celebration was in NYC in 1792. San Francisco has the second oldest celebration dating back to 1869. Denver was one of the first cities to celebrate Columbus Day and in 1907 Colorado held the first state wide celebration. In 1937 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made Columbus Day a federal holiday at the behest of the Knights of Columbus.)
Increasingly there is more and more opposition to this celebration. In 2002, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela changed the name to “Dia de la Resistencia Indigena” (Day of Indigenous Resistance”. In the state of South Dakota the day is now officially called “Native American Day”, instead of Columbus Day.
Many critics believe that Columbus was a murderer that directly brought about the demise of many Taino (Arawak) Indians from Hispaniola. The conquistadors brought with them many diseases that were spread both accidently and intentionally among the indigenous populations. The Europeans brought diseases, war and the seizing of land that caused an estimated 85% of the native population to be wiped out within 150 years of Columbus’ arrival.
In 1990, representatives from all over the hemisphere met in Quito, Ecuador at the first intercontinental gathering of indigenous people in the Americas, to mobilize against the quin-centennial celebration of Columbus Day. Last month the Bolivian President (who is an Aymara Indian) Evo Morales successfully led an effort to get the United Nations General Assembly to pass an important declaration of indigenous rights. Article 34, specifically, says that indigenous peoples have rights to promote, develop and maintain their institutional structures and their customs. Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the United States all voted against it.
In this recent interview, Morales said;
“I want the people of the United States and the people of the world to understand that the indigenous movement is not vengeful. We want to live together, respecting the difference and the diversity that we have. Some of the people in our country, when they saw that this declaration that came out that’s not just a declaration recognizing indigenous peoples, but also right to land, to self-determination, they think that we’re going to take a vengeful attitude, and I’m here to say never.”
While some people may be quick to say that to change this tradition is ridiculous, I think these protests raise some important questions. For instance, why should we celebrate Columbus when he wasn’t the first to discover the America’s and his behavior was questionable at best?
Does this celebration of Columbus contribute to the ongoing abuses of indigenous peoples by our government and US corporations around the world? Can we look at our imperial foreign policy honestly when we continue to have national myths and history books that are filled with lies, distortions and major omissions?
Could this distorted worldview have anything to do with the warped public policy we get in Cincinnati? This question makes me think of this article and more specifically this question by Tom Dutton. “Is it really too extreme to suggest that white society never intended to fully include blacks and other people of color and shows no inclination to bring about such inclusion and equality?”
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