Buffalo Rising Online

Oct 8th 2007, 7:29pm By Bill Zimmermann

In so many of our hearts, there lays a special place for the memory of Columbus. As a sailor, he is unbeaten in history—he is the da Vinci, the Edison, the Einstein. He is my hero. And yet my hero does not deserve a national holiday. His grand memory is mine, and many others, but not so for so many, many others’ more.

Second Monday in October...today it's October 8, commemorating October 12, 1492. So is it Un-American to be against Columbus’ Day? Or is it Un-American to be for Columbus’ Day? We don’t ask the United Kingdom to celebrate July 4th with us, but we do require all the Native Americans, African Americans, Hawaiians, and others who were not treated well as a result of Columbus’ adventures, to retire from their civil and school work for a day of honor and celebration to Columbus’ almost sanctified Day.

The Santa Maria myth has more barnacles of political and historical incorrectness than any other American fable we’ve been forced to accept in our schools' American Mystery classes.

Italians in Buffalo have every right and honor to celebrate their legacy, as they have this weekend, in sync with the Columbus Holiday. An honorary film and loads of events filled the weekend. It is their holiday, and while Columbus’ business venture was soley on behalf of Spain --and not whatsoever Italy, it is still acceptable for free Italians to celebrate, for Columbus was Italian--but the rest of us must ask about its core and meaning whether it is a nationally acceptable one.

Buffalo State’s Lori Quigley, a Seneca, has an entirely different scope on Columbus, one that deserves as enriching a listen to as any other. She teaches education at Buffalo State College and is vice chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Indian Education. Quigley said that our history teachers need to learn how to begin a more full and honest dialogue about Columbus with children of all ages.

Come to think of it, when I was in grammar school, Columbus was a rotund hero of the seas, a genius adventurer, and pure as the driven snow that surrounds Santa’s workshop.

Fact is, Captain Columbus was on an aggressive business trip to Asia, and not one penny of this trip was intended for Italy whose American descendants so prize his legacy, but it was all for imperial Spain’s ruthless global reaches of disturbing every possible people from their life soils.

Even the largest ecumenical body in the United States, the National Council of Churches, calls on Christians to refrain from celebrating the Columbus Day, saying, "What represented newness of freedom, hope, and opportunity for some was the occasion for oppression, degradation and genocide for others.”

When coming upon the natives indigenous to the new world, Columbus and his crew were downright vicious, cruel and torturously disrespectful to the native’s rights to humanity. In his aftermath, he brought publicization to the new world, upsetting an entire millennium of an environmentally non-destructive people’s world, and delivering Europeans’ taste for war, the delivery of disease, and management of slavery. Not so great gifts to celebrate.

Professor Quigley spoke from a panel at Syracuse University’s College of Law and she said: ''Some of the truer facts about Columbus have come out recently,'' she said, adding that teaching resources and materials are starting to adapt to the change. ''I think that classroom teachers can do an awful lot with that.''

Teaching about the pain inflicted on Native communities by Columbus can be difficult in a nation that sees his birthday as a paid day off from work, said Quigley.

Some change in attitudes toward Columbus Day can be seen in educational circles, said Quigley, noting that the academic calendar at Buffalo State College now reads ''Indigenous Peoples Day.''

This sort of progress is easier in private schools than in state and federal institutions, she said.

While these signs are encouraging, the other panelists agreed that a true mainstreaming of the new interpretation of Columbus Day is essential.

''We have two national holidays named after individual people in this country,'' said Buff State's Quigley toward the end of the discussion. ''One is named after a man who fought against racial injustice. The other is named after a man who brought slavery to our shores. They're polar opposites.''

Not everyone celebrates Columbus’ reach to Asia (which when he died he still thought was his conquest of discovery). In the state of South Dakota, the day is officially a state holiday known as "Native American Day", not Columbus Day.

Let us accept the fact that Hawaii was more recently added to our States list, and if we have any respect for Hawaiians, native Hawaiians have little respect for Columbus. Many Native Hawaiians decry the celebration of both Columbus, known to have committed acts of violent subjugation of native people. It is therefore called Discoverer's Day and is a day of protest for some advocacy groups.

A popular protest site is the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace and the Chancery building of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu. In 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued the Papal Bull Inter caetera that proclaimed that all Christian Europeans had ultimate dominion over newly discovered lands.

This was used as a moral permission slip for Columbus in his exploits. Such advocacy groups have been commemorating the Discoverer's Day holiday as their own alternative, Indigenous Peoples Day. The week is called Indigenous Peoples Week.

In Venezuela, the Hispanics themselves, of Spain’s reach and legacy, have termed the day Día de la Resistencia Indígena (Day of Indigenous Resistance) to commemorate the Columbus era’s ceremonial event.

Like the Italians, however, I really do, too, have a deep and personal respect for the day, but only if it were unfederalized. My aunt Rosemary is from Spain,-- from Spanish noble heritage-- and she headed the PR-publications department for the Spanish Embassy in D.C. for a number of years.

For the 1992 500th anniversary of Columbus’ journey, my aunt engaged me in working on a special memorial book’s promotion which had as one of its sponsors a man from Spain by the name Cristobol Columbus, a great-so-many-great grandson of Columbus himself. It was with family pride and honor to be part of the celebration.

I will celebrate Columbus Day every year—but I wish it were under a wider banner, one that included a concept for all the people’s that have rushed to build upon the dream of the New World.

If it could do that, then federalize the holiday. Otherwise, let’s just go to work, as usual.

And that’s the news from On This Day from Buffalo.