History of our holiday
I don’t know why we still celebrate Columbus Day. Actually, I don’t know why we ever did. You probably know the truth about Christopher Columbus at this point, though most of us were deprived of that history earlier on in our educational careers.
We’re taught that Columbus is a hero. We’re taught that he “sailed the ocean blue” and discovered America. We’re obscured of the reality that Columbus’ “exploration” was a brutal act of imperialism.
By now we understand that people already occupied the land and it doesn’t really make sense to say that Columbus discovered land that people already knew about and lived on.
Columbus Day continues to be a nationally recognized holiday, but the Saginaw Chippewa Indian tribe and Mount Pleasant are recognizing Indigenous People’s Day.
Indigenous People’s Day provides an opportunity for people to learn about the history that is often obscured: the history of the people who occupied the land before Columbus “discovered” it.
This acknowledgement of Indigenous People’s Day shows the progress our community is making. Because of the connections between the city and the tribe, Indigenous People’s Day is so important. However, though Indigenous People’s Day is important in our community, it is also important everywhere else in the country and more cities should start to recognize that.
Instead of simply recognizing Columbus, Central Michigan University will be hosting a Soup and Substance luncheon recognizing Indigenous People’s Day and discussing the truth about Columbus. There will be an information table about what we were taught wrong about Columbus. People will have the opportunity to watch a documentary on campus about how U.S. policies have abused indigenous people.
This event makes me proud to be a student at CMU and proud to be part of the Mount Pleasant community.
Holding onto our original perceptions of history would be easy. Believing everything we were told would be effortless. Shrugging and saying, “Well, history is written by the victors,” would be a simple excuse not to open our eyes and dive deeper into our country’s issues. But our community isn’t taking the easy way out and you shouldn’t either.
At one point, Columbus was the victor. And now he has a national holiday. He has countless history books praising him as an explorer and as a hero.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t rewrite that history. That doesn’t mean that we can’t challenge ourselves to rethink everything we once thought we knew.
