Is Columbus Day a holiday for Native Americans

dunkman

must be weird for them... the US having Columbus Day, a celebration of the day America was discovered, and yet they were already living there...

jlew24asu

its not even a holiday for many americans. stock market and many business are open. no one really cares.

jeffbr

Why is it weird? If it wasn't on any maps, no trade, no notion of a continent even existing, then it was, in fact, discovered. Anytime someone discovers anything, that thing they discovered was already there.

LikeAnOpeningBandForTheSun

i feel bad for the guy. Just some guy trying to make a buck in India and runs into a new continent. Now he's responsible for hundreds of years of immigration, war, disease and genocide and everything else that has ever happened in the Americas, at least according to assholes like Chavez.

But the italians are having a parade today!

mammasan

dunkman wrote:

must be weird for them... the US having Columbus Day, a celebration of the day America was discovered, and yet they were already living there...

I don't know how they view it. I know that if I was native American I would probably look upon this day the same way Eurpoean jews looked upon the day Hitler rose to power.

RolandTD20Kdrummer

5 minute excerpt from the documentary The Canary Effect

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wm0EvTk8o4

soulsinging

jlew24asu wrote:

its not even a holiday for many americans. stock market and many business are open. no one really cares.

oh to work for the government...

Vedd Hedd

jeffbr wrote:

Why is it weird? If it wasn't on any maps, no trade, no notion of a continent even existing, then it was, in fact, discovered. Anytime someone discovers anything, that thing they discovered was already there.

......acording to Europe and the Church. I'm sure the people living there already would disagree whether or not is was "discovered".

Funny thing, though. It WAS on maps.....it WAS known to exist. Columbus was not the first to see it.

If anyone wants to, read this book. "Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies" by Bartolome de las Casas.


http://www.amazon.com/Short-Account-Destruction-Indies-Bartolome/dp/0140445625/ref=sr_1_1/002-2836466-8927211?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191870176&sr=8-1

Its an actual account of what Columbus and the Spanish did to the native people of the Indies, and how brutal they were to them.

I put Columbus right up there with Hitler, Hussein, etc.

RolandTD20Kdrummer

Columbus was the first Catholic

macgyver06

MrSmith wrote:

i feel bad for the guy. Just some guy trying to make a buck in India and runs into a new continent. Now he's responsible for hundreds of years of immigration, war, disease and genocide and everything else that has ever happened in the Americas, at least according to assholes like Chavez.

But the italians are having a parade today!

una gente en dios

en dios

a people of god



that whole india thing is made up considering it wasnt even named india for a long time there after


just some info.

Vedd Hedd

macgyver06 wrote:

una gente en dios

en dios

a people of god



that whole india thing is made up considering it wasnt even named india for a long time there after


just some info.

Correct.

Most people have a 6th grade level of knowledge when it comes to Columbus....Im not really blaming anyone for that other than schools....but the story is so much different.

LikeAnOpeningBandForTheSun

i didnt mean to sound like i thought he was a great guy or that he proved the world was round or anything. He was a pretty shitty but probably typical rich European of the time. Thats why I'd say he wasn't quite a Hitler (that and the fact that he didn't rule a country. He was more of a petty thug. I guess its a matter of scale).

I just think its strange that he is the focal point of all colonization. I bet he had no idea how much of an impact he had on the Earth.

my2hands

Vedd Hedd wrote:

Correct.

Most people have a 6th grade level of knowledge when it comes to Columbus....Im not really blaming anyone for that other than schools....but the story is so much different.

parents

Vedd Hedd

MrSmith wrote:

i didnt mean to sound like i thought he was a great guy or that he proved the world was round or anything. He was a pretty shitty but probably typical rich European of the time. Thats why I'd say he wasn't quite a Hitler (that and the fact that he didn't rule a country. He was more of a petty thug. I guess its a matter of scale).

I just think its strange that he is the focal point of all colonization. I bet he had no idea how much of an impact he had on the Earth.

Actually, some of the things he did were worse than Hitler. Or at LEAST, on par with the holocaust.

And he was largely reeponsible for setting up the system, most likely becasue he was the first from Europe to do so, and was under such HUGE pressure from the Church to bring back wealth, in the form of GOLD, not spices.

There were huge gold mines in the indies, but the natives did not really need any gold.....however, gold was extremely valuable to the Church and to Europe.....

But the indies lacked mining equipment, so to speed the process Columbus would give each slave a cup....they would take their cup into the mines and if, after a certain amount of time it wasnt filled, they would chop off limbs and force you to continue to work...arms or legs would be placed at the mouth of the mine for all the slaves to see to use as motivation...and if people died, he would place the bodies in the slave camp as a reminder of what would happen if you didnt get your quota.....if a slave resisted, they would rape their family members and gut them alive.

Great stuff.

EDIT: I forgot to add....the slaves were given files to file off gold dust.....thats what they had to do to fill their cups. They lacked tools other than files....so they would get the gold dust and take it back to europe and melt it back togehter to make gold bars, religious artifacts, money, etc.

RolandTD20Kdrummer

Vedd Hedd wrote:

Actually, some of the things he did were worse than Hitler. Or at LEAST, on par with the holocaust.

And he was largely reeponsible for setting up the system, most likely becasue he was the first from Europe to do so, and was under such HUGE pressure from the Church to bring back wealth, in the form of GOLD, not spices.

There were huge gold mines in the indies, but the natives did not really need any gold.....however, gold was extremely valuable to the Church and to Europe.....

But the indies lacked mining equipment, so to speed the process Columbus would give each slave a cup....they would take their cup into the mines and if, after a certain amount of time it wasnt filled, they would chop off limbs and force you to continue to work...arms or legs would be placed at the mouth of the mine for all the slaves to see to use as motivation...and if people died, he would place the bodies in the slave camp as a reminder of what would happen if you didnt get your quota.....if a slave resisted, they would rape their family members and gut them alive.

Great stuff.

Or the ripping babies from their mother arms then swinging them by the feet head first against rocks, trees etc...

Very pleasant those first European explorers were.

Those parts didn't make the grade 6 textbooks for some reason.

mammasan

RolandTD20Kdrummer wrote:

Or the ripping babies from their mother arms then swinging them by the feet head first against rocks, trees etc...

Very pleasant those first European explorers were.

Those parts didn't make the grade 6 textbooks for some reason.

What's that saying. The victors get to write history.

Vedd Hedd

RolandTD20Kdrummer wrote:

Or the ripping babies from their mother arms then swinging them by the feet head first against rocks, trees etc...

Very pleasant those first European explorers were.

Those parts didn't make the grade 6 textbooks for some reason.

True. And many people never take College level history, or even pay attention in HS.

Ah well.

LikeAnOpeningBandForTheSun

Vedd Hedd wrote:

Actually, some of the things he did were worse than Hitler. Or at LEAST, on par with the holocaust.

And he was largely reeponsible for setting up the system, most likely becasue he was the first from Europe to do so, and was under such HUGE pressure from the Church to bring back wealth, in the form of GOLD, not spices.

There were huge gold mines in the indies, but the natives did not really need any gold.....however, gold was extremely valuable to the Church and to Europe.....

But the indies lacked mining equipment, so to speed the process Columbus would give each slave a cup....they would take their cup into the mines and if, after a certain amount of time it wasnt filled, they would chop off limbs and force you to continue to work...arms or legs would be placed at the mouth of the mine for all the slaves to see to use as motivation...and if people died, he would place the bodies in the slave camp as a reminder of what would happen if you didnt get your quota.....if a slave resisted, they would rape their family members and gut them alive.

Great stuff.

thats not what i'm arguing. Sadly, with all sorts of atrocities and slave practices common in the world at the time, i doubt Colombus was much different than any other powerful person. Where as Hitler's actions were far less acceptable to people in his time. I'd say Colombus was more of a tiny, wannabe HitlerStalin.

Vedd Hedd

Oh yeah....that book I mentioned....it was a diary of a priest sent by the church to help convert the slaves.

In it, he discusses his mission, the people he was to convert, the conditions they were living in prior to and after Columbus. It basically describes how the people were living in a well formed community, very sustainable, and how initially they welcomed the Europeans. Many of them even converted willingly at first. But they were ultimately subjugated to become slaves.

The priest became silently critical of Columbus and ultimately called him some sort of devil....its been a while since I read it...

When the priest went back to Europe to tell of the mission, his accounts were largely lost, until his diary showed up later.

He told the Church was was going on, and they either refused to believe it or didnt care......but most of his records, other than the diary were somehow missing.

LikeAnOpeningBandForTheSun

And i honestly can't remember in school anyone ever saying Colombus was a great guy. The books said he was the first EUROPEAN to discover America (which technically still isn't true but its close) and thats sbout it. I don't know where you guys went to school, but i went to school in the worst fucking school systems in America (Mississippi and Louisiana) and the teachers (most of whom were pretty liberal) didn't portray American history as all sunshine and rainbows. This isn't 1942. Seriously, what the fuck.

Vedd Hedd

MrSmith wrote:

thats not what i'm arguing. Sadly, with all sorts of atrocities and slave practices common in the world at the time, i doubt Colombus was much different than any other powerful person. Where as Hitler's actions were far less acceptable to people in his time. I'd say Colombus was more of a tiny, wannabe HitlerStalin.

Fair enough. I see what youre saying.

I guess Isabella and Ferdinand would be the Hitler, then.:)

Or the Church who sponsored him!:)