EDITORIAL: Indigenous Peoples Day a stark, necessary reminder of America & Europe's bloody past


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Oneida and Ojibwe performer Ty Defoe, speaks at the Indigenous Peoples Day Workshop, Oct. 10, in the Kiva Auditorium, in Moore Hall.

The face, and soul, of America are changing. We are becoming a more diverse nation, one that is more black, brown and yellow than white.

At home and abroad, we tout our commitment to diversity as America’s greatest strength, even when some citizens fail to uphold that ideal.

That’s why CMU and Mount Pleasant’s city government work so closely with the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe. It’s why we choose to recognize Oct. 11 as Indigenous Peoples Day instead of honoring Christopher Columbus.

On Monday, Mount Pleasant’s City Commission issued its third proclamation to rename Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day, distinguishing the Tribe and their hardships in America over the last 500 years.

We join the city in embracing Indigenous Peoples Day. We support – and will continue to support – renaming Christopher Columbus Day on a state and federal level.

Our relationships with the CMU community are important to us. That includes residents of Mount Pleasant, but most importantly members of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe.

When we invoke Columbus’ name on a national holiday, we are in turn celebrating the deep wounds of an entire race. It is wrong to continue that practice.

At the commission meeting, Tribal Chief Frank Cloutier thanked the city for their support and understanding the violent history of European colonization. He also pointed out some of the recent problems that exist between Native people and Modern American culture.

We are committed to pointing out instances where our two communities have failed to see eye to eye.

We confirm that commitment to unity by using their name respectfully. We support the Tribe’s efforts in the community. We work through offices on campus to offer outreach programs to non-Native students, all with the hope of learning as much as we can from Tribal culture.

We enroll Native students and pay their tuition with the help of state funds. Their success is our success, and our community is more vibrant because of their contributions.

When the state falls short of its promise to fund Native tuition in full, CMU makes up the difference, ensuring Native students’ rights to access a university education.

We cannot fathom CMU without them and their influence on our own culture. Being in such close proximity to Native people gives us insight into their struggle for acceptance in a land that was once theirs.

Make no mistake – the idea that America was stolen land is not a myth. European colonization was an invasion followed by genocide.

We slowly but surely degraded the Native culture. We decimated a vast network of Tribes with booze, bullets and blankets riddled with disease. Europe and America's tactics were deceptive. They were despicable.

To blame the ensuing Native American genocide squarely on Columbus is mostly unfair. A host of American actors helped perpetuate hatred against our Native brothers and sisters for centuries. His arrival in the West Indies marked the beginning of the end for Native peoples.

Celebrating a man that opened the door to such horrors is not only wrong, it is a gross misunderstanding of our own history. That’s why so many cities and some states are choosing instead to celebrate indigenous people.

The Tribal community is a short five miles away from CMU. In many ways, it is the closest some of our students have gotten to interacting with a culture and a people other than their own.

We view that interaction as paramount to becoming a better citizen of this country. History has a tendency to repeat itself when we forget its most vital lessons.

Let us use Indigenous Peoples Day not only as a marker of the past, but also as a lens into our current issues with race relations and with all people from different lands.

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About Ben Solis

Ben Solis is the Managing Editor of Central Michigan Life. He has served as a city and university ...

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