“In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue”…..goes the rhyme my Anglo-Saxon educators taught us in the Denver Public Schools. We’d get Columbus Day off every year to honor the Italian sailor who allegedly discovered “America”.
They used to teach us other lies, too. Like this nation is a democracy. Like “all men are created equal”. Like this is the land of freedom.
It used to be I had an almost reverent opinion of my school teachers who taught me these things. I felt teachers were to be honored because they brought knowledge to children. I found out too late they really served as the carriers of the disease of nationalism and capitalism.
I found out too late my teachers fed me full of European lies that were racist to the core. And to this day, they continue to do so. How do I know? Because, to this day, this nation and this city of Denver continues to honor the genocidal exploits of the Italian sailor called Columbus.
The Catholic Church continues to honor a man who plundered and destroyed the cultures of indigenous peoples by his staking claim and literally stealing the lands of these peoples. The Knights of Columbus continue to be an active men’s organization in the Church.
Columbus set into action hundreds of years of destruction and death targeting indigenous peoples in North and South Americas and the areas in the vicinity. He brought the arrogance of the European barbarians to the shores of the Americas and used the Church to justify his barbarism.
I recently read a column by Paul Campos (The Rocky Mountain News, October 2, 2007) about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that caught my attention when the writer captured the European/American mindset in one of his paragraphs. He said:
“In short, when a political leader claims he is the head of a unique nation, anointed by history or even God himself to be a light unto the world, we tend to consider him either an amusing crank or a dangerous lunatic.
Unless that leader happens to an American president - then he's merely stating a self-evident truth”.
That same mindset continues today in the continued arrogance of certain Americans celebrating Christopher Columbus. Here in Denver, that group is mostly Italian-Americans who refuse to acknowledge the racism of Columbus.
They refuse to understand the insult their yearly parades honoring this man is toward the descendants of the indigenous peoples he enslaved and killed after he and his troops had stolen their lands in their Christian self-righteousness.
This past Saturday, October 6, 2007, Italian-Americans in Denver organized a parade to run in the downtown area of the city. And once again a large group of Native Americans and supporters came to block their way in the parade route.
83 of the protestors were arrested by the Denver Police Department dressed in riot gear, pointing weapons, wielding offensive batons and using pain holds.
It was clear the police were practicing for the upcoming 2008 Democratic Convention to be held in Denver. The message is clear that the Denver Police Department will utilize a violent response to any protestors at the convention.
The 83 protestors arrested at the Columbus Day Parade included the leaders and organizers of the protest. This is another clear message to be kept in mind for the upcoming convention.
The Columbus Day “holiday” started in Denver in 1907 and later became a national holiday. It has been slowly diminished in status because employers no longer want to pay holiday pay or let employees have the day off. It even receded somewhat in stature here in Denver until the last ten to fifteen years.
Now it has become a yearly event for a group of revisionist Italian-Americans to hold the parade in acknowledged defiance of the local Native American community’s objection to a man who slaughtered and enslaved their historical ancestors.
The Italian-Americans feel it their God given right to enshrine and celebrate a man responsible for more deaths than Hitler by saying his actions were only acts that were common during that time in history.
They even go so far as trying to make the indigenous peoples out as villains and savages because they fought back in attempts to save the land that was rightfully theirs. Today, no doubt, the Italians would say the indigenous peoples were “insurgents” or “terrorists”.
There is a great correlation to the continued American “manifest destiny” and “American exceptionalism” throughout the world and the annihilation of the Native American population began by Columbus.
Today our indigenous peoples are located in Iraq and Afghanistan. During “my war of liberation” it was the Vietnamese.
The savages or insurgents or terrorists or guerillas of American history have always been described in ways to demonize and vilify a culture and people. The young of the Euro-centric education system aren’t allowed to learn about these cultures unless they take it upon themselves to do so.
The omission of knowledge about cultures other than European taught in public schools and most other schools in this nation has made it easy to recruit young men (and now young women) into the military to fight the “demons” opposing our way of life. Lack of knowledge about a culture has made it easy to have My Lai and Haditha type events to occur.
It is no mistake the troops going to these remote nations have lack of knowledge about their cultures. If we were to make a people human by learning about their ways of life it would become more difficult to kill them. And so it was with the indigenous people Christopher Columbus encountered.
Peoples with ancient ways of preserving lands and living in peace were seen as heathens and savages because they weren’t Christians. They weren’t Europeans. Their skin tones were dark and therefore seen as inferior.
I grew up in this state, living most of the time here in Denver. During my school years state history was a required subject from grade school until high school. I vividly remember reading about the miners and settlers of the state but there was seldom a mention of the true natives of this state.
Sure, we learned about Mesa Verde and mysterious cave dwellers that disappeared centuries before the European ever arrived. We learned there were Ute, Araphoe, Sioux, Cheyenne, Apache and Navaho tribes that once had large numbers here.
We didn’t learn about the Sand Creek Massacre. We didn’t learn about the cultures of these tribes.
I don’t remember Native Americans being in my Denver Public Schools classes in the 1960’s. I look back now and about the only thing I remember indicating Native Americans once owned this land are the street names.
Many of the streets in the city bear tribal names which few of us give a second thought. Few of us care about the origin of those names.
A few years back I was arrested at one of the Columbus Day parades for blocking the route of the Italians and their associates celebrating the man responsible for the start of the continued genocide of the natives of this land.
The cases against me and the hundred or so others arrested was thrown out by a judge because of the lack of city ordinance specifying such actions as ours to block the parade.
I had some problems with those arrests because of the overt cooperation of the organizers with the Denver police in carrying out the arrests.
In fact, it wasn’t a Denver police officer who came to escort me to the holding area for the arrest and to board the bus to take us to the city jail. It was a member of the organizers security team.
I had previous arrests to oppose the wars against the Iraqi and Afghan peoples that are clearly a screen to exploit them for their resources and the strategic locations of their countries. As a combat veteran, I know the devastation of war on the soldiers and Marines and the people of the nations invaded.
Every day I see the racism of this country at work either in the execution of war or in the administration of justice or the care of the poor. Every day I find it appalling the European mindset prevails in the way it does.
I was asked by a brother to go to this year’s march from the four directions of Earth to the site of this year’s Columbus Day parade in Denver. I passed because of the collusion and cooperation I felt in the last assembly in which I was arrested.
Today, the Monday of the holiday celebrating Columbus, I’m greatly sorry I failed to join my brothers and sisters in their opposition. I see the connection of what started back in 1492 and continues to this day.
Paul Rafferty an observer and writer of UN Observer and International Report made a brilliant point in his column on October 7, 2007.
"Oddly, the name “Christopher” means “Christ-Bearer”. Perhaps, it is time to honour Christopher Columbus, in a Christian manner, by making restitution for past sins and by attempting to follow the basic principles of Christianity and “Love of one’s neighbour, as oneself”..
The Vatican might begin to set an example, by rescinding the Medieval Papal Bulls which authorised Genocide and along with other “Christian” organisations look into their own practices, during the colonial, imperial period – and now.
The United States could make a start by honouring the Treaties made with the Native American Nations.
All the governments of the Western Hemisphere might also begin to recognise the fact that whatever achievements they may attain, all is built upon stolen land."
Richard King of Washington state’s The Daily Evergreen writes about the need to end Columbus Day in his column today (October 8, 2007):
In studying his journals, accounts of his contemporaries and historical analyses, it becomes clear the ambitious and intrepid explorer neither discovered America, nor brought civilization to the savages. Instead – even though lost – he displayed great arrogance upon encountering numerous diverse and sophisticated native nations, believing them to be less than human.
His achievements in the Caribbean include enslaving and plundering; implementing punitive policies that included cutting off the hands of those who did not bring his invading force enough gold; allowing, if not encouraging, massacres; the destruction of families and communities and a cavalier blood sport in which his soldiers would routinely laid wagers on whether they could manage to slice a man in two at a stroke, or cut an individual’s head from his body with a single blow of their axes. Eyewitness accounts estimate more than 5 million people were exterminated within the first three years of his arrival.
Although we may want stop short of naming Columbus a terrorist or comparing him to Hitler as some are wont to do, I find it hard to believe we celebrate a holiday each October to honor the man, his character or his accomplishments. Rather, the holiday allows the telling of stories about the founding of America. One thing that makes these stores about Columbus so powerful is that they serve as an origin myth, which encourage Americans to remember a heroic past devoid of conflict, pain and power. The celebrations and stories constituting this collective memory of when and how the nation came to be erase much of what actually happened, excluding from view uneasy experiences and untidy complexities shaping the emergence and evolution of the United States. Enshrining Columbus not only gives the American experience a meaningful beginning, but more importantly denies the genocidal and imperial acts that were to follow as Europeans sought to exploit resources and extended their hegemony.
Columbus Day allows Americans to forget the past and to deny its implications for the present. Moreover, miseducation has caused many Americans not to recognize American Indians, their perspectives and their lasting presence, leaving them without empathy for or awareness of the joys and struggles of Native Americans.
Perhaps Americans continue to celebrate Columbus Day because they do not know better and have been encouraged not to remember or feel the pain and violence at the heart of the American experience. I fear that forgetting is just another expression of the anti-Indianism initiated with Columbus’ arrival. Those of us teaching and learning at a land grant institution on native land have a special obligation to never forget. We have a responsibility to find ways to bring more American Indian students, staff and faculty to WSU, and with them indigenous ways of knowing and being. Increased offerings in indigenous studies would be one path toward this end, another would be to increase the funding and prominence of The Plateau Center for American Indian Studies. Small steps to be sure, but essential efforts if we are to come to terms with Columbus, empire and injustice, and open spaces for reconciliation and understanding."
So why do me like George Vendegnia, a parade organizer in Denver, continue to insult and ignore the objections of Native American citizens?
"With this protest, it's just motivating people more to be back next year and exercise their right to participate in an American holiday," Vendegnia said.
And why does the alleged liberal mayor of Denver, John Hickenlooper, continue to allow the overtly racist parade to take place in the streets of this city?
I can only answer for my failure to attend the demonstration against the parade. I’m of European ancestors who came here with the idea they could steal another people’s land and enslave them all in the name of God. But I get it. I understand the hatefulness of people like Vendegnia.
I remember the 60’s and Bull Connor using dogs and fire hoses against the “freedom marchers” with Martin Luther King.
I remember the assassination of Medger Evers.
I remember the occupation of Wounded Knee and the kangaroo court trials.
I remember Malcolm X being assassinated.
I remember Martin Luther King’s assassination.
People like me need to make the connections of the racist events of terror and violence against our brothers and sisters of color and non-European ancestry. We need to “get it”.
Martin Luther King eloquently stated:
“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.”
“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”
I must heed the words of Chief Joseph:
“Good words do not last long unless they amount to something. Words do not pay for my dead people.
They do not pay for my country, now overrun by white men. They do not protect my father’s grave. They do not pay for all my horses and cattle.
Good words cannot give me back my children.
Good words will not give my people good health and stop them from dying.
Good words will not get my people a home where they can live in peace and take care of themselves.
I am tired of talk that comes to nothing It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and all the broken promises. There has been too much talking by men who had no right to talk.”
If I fail to join the brothers and sisters my ancestors enslaved and killed and fail to object to the continued celebration of men like Columbus, I have given validation to men and women like Vendegnia.
There are allegedly rights to say whatever you desire in this country but a state and national government should not endorse perpetrators of crime and genocide.
Italian-Americans can be proud of many men and women in their history but their pride for Columbus is akin to wearing hoods and carrying burning crosses.
The Catholic Church’s failure to disavow the Knight’s of Columbus moniker for its men’s service organization is a continued perpetration of racism and an endorsement of a man in history that caused incalculable horror and death.
The European culture has dominated this nation since its first days and failed to address the lies and crimes committed in its expansion as a nation. We continue to neglect and ignore the truth of history.
We continue to ignore the wounds of history.
We fail our brothers and sisters whose ancestors cared for this land long before the arrival of Europeans.
The time to honor their history and their wounds is long past due. We need to stop inflicting the wounds with celebrations such as Columbus Day.
I apologize to my brother who invited me to the rally and march to oppose the racist parade. I failed you and the brothers and sisters who placed themselves in harm’s way to end this hateful event.
I do want you to know I understand the connection between calling Iraqis “sand niggers”, Vietnamese being called “gooks” and Christopher Columbus calling indigenous peoples “savages and heathens”.
I may not always be there but my spirit and solidarity will always reflect my disdain toward the ones who continue to foster the hate and racist thinking.
Wm. Terry Leichner, RN
USMC combat veteran (infantryman)
Denver VVAW member
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