Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples/Genocide Day

Every year during this week America observes a holiday known as Columbus Day, but alternately known as Indigenous Peoples Day, or sometimes Genocide Day.
But most people who celebrate the indigenous/genocide version are disturbed by the possibility that the so-called white man might have already been in the New World many thousands of years before Columbus or the Vikings: http:
In other words a pre-historic version of colonialism, imperialism and slavery, starring Incas, Mayas, Aztecs, pre-Columbian colonies created by mariners from the Fertile Crescent. Wadda ya think kids?
　:afro:

 

The evidence is sketchy at best

On a side note: every thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts the indigenous people hold a protest rally near Plymouth Rock where the Pilgrims first landed aboard the Mayflower.


Hotwater

 

i think we dont need links in first posts...even if you been here 6 and a half years

 

I mostly just think that Columbus Day should be celebrated by claiming someone else's land and property as your own.

 

It wasn't a purposeful genocide.

Most Aboriginal Americans who died perished from disease, not from weapons. It's not as if the colonists were familiar with notions of immunity or anything like that.


However, genocide DID happen in Newfoundland. There were tons of "Indian hunts" done for sport there. If you ask a Newfoundlander, they'll say that the Beothuk married into the European population, but this isn't true.

 

I don't celebrate Columbus Day...

He was a serious douche bag.

Yesterday was business as usual for me, even if none of my clients were around....

 

Columbus didn't even discover America. It was discovered by people from Egypt, Phoenicia and medieval Europe long before Columbus. CC simply had the Knights Templar's Vatican money behind him, therefore making him the first to officially discover it.

 

If it was something that would back up his claim, I think it would be apropos.

Sounds straight up crazy right now.

 

Everyone here is nuts.

 

THIS.



Where's the evidence that people before the Vikings (who were only in Canada for about ten years) were in the New World before other Europeans? None. Diddly squat.

 

Columbus and Amerigo were explorers not businessmen, for sure what Europeans did to Africa and the Americas was appalling (and absolutely they committed genocide on all 3 continents) but Columbus seems like a pretty cool guy to me, I love all those stories about how they got lost and ended up in Argentina and things....

I think that the celebration is about the qualities Americans celebrate of dreaming of a better life and having the nerve to go after it.

I totally agree that the way history is taught is shocking how schoolchildren aren't taught much about the amount of brutality that built 'The New World' but that is just one of many many things wrong with history teaching based on politics which still has echoes of the 'White Man's Burden' thing

 

So what have you got to say about the state of human rights in your country?

 

China?

It's pretty fucked. There is some progress, things are much better than I ima they were 10 or 20 years ago...I'm just here working so I don't really know the half of it. It's really hard to trust any sources, specially not speaking Chinese.

Pretty fucked how the 'democracies' just 'forgot' about it as soon as they were allowed to cash in on the cheap labour as well

I don't think that it's really anything to do with particular countries, capitalism has depended on authoritarian regimes since the end of the Cold War to support it with cheap goods and resources in place of ideological justification/fear. You wouldn't have the CCP in china if you didn't have the plutocracy in America and vice-versa.

 

It's important to remember living in the West that a lot of what you hear about China is propaganda or just wrongheaded. Coming from the news, the government and inependent people

That Free Tibet was a classic example, a load of Hollywood people met the Dalai Lama in the 90s and were so impressed they made all of those propaganda movies along the lines of Braveheart with the Evil Chinese killing the peaceful monks, the truth is that the days of the theocracy in Tibet did incredible damage to the country.
They were like the fundamentalist governments in Afghanistan who wanted to keep their country in the 14th century starving their people and making them victims of the wills of people who thought they were talking to God etc. That doesn't suit the narrative though, the idea of this Shangri-La destroyed by arrogant communists is purely a western invention

 

i don't think anyone actually "celebrates" columbus day.

 

nothing wrong with any of the 'brutality' in the past