Stop celebrating Columbus Day and start celebrating the native cultures his arrival in the Americas began the process of displacingThe second Monday in October has been designated an American federal holiday in Christopher Columbus’s honor since 1937. To most people in the United States,this commemoration of his 1492 landing in the Bahamas no longer has much meaning – many Americans outside of large Italian American communities are only dimly aware that it’s an official holiday. Many people don’t even pick up the day off work, instead trading Columbus Day for the day after Thanksgiving.
The holiday’s popularity has been waning for some time. In cities like Seattle and Minneapolis, and it has been already been renamed Indigenous Peoples’ Day,a reminder that Columbus’s voyages set off a chain of events that wreaked havoc on native populations in the current World. It’s time to design that piecemeal commemoration official: stop celebrating Columbus and start celebrating the native cultures he began the process of displacing. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com