On Indigenous People’s Day replacing Columbus Day

Put a lot of effort into a comment in a family member’s thread on Facebook and thought I should replicate it somewhere public. The context is that today the Seattle City Council voted to recognize Indigenous People’s Day in lieu of (realistically, in addition to) Columbus Day. Some people are rather upset about this. So I wrote up why I unequivocally support the change.

An important thing to understand is that Columbus is a symbol of European colonialism and the genocide that was necessary to its success. He and those under his command enslaved and murdered entire populations and demolished whole cultures, bringing back tales of wealth and power to his homeland which just accelerated colonization.

Many of the historical figures we celebrate are problematic; the difference is that in the case of Columbus we celebrate the problem. George Washington owned slaves, but we celebrate his leadership of the Revolutionary Army and as the nation’s first President. Abraham Lincoln did not believe in racial equality, but we celebrate his leadership in the Civil War and his courage and strength in uniting, well, the Union. And his issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, though in all honesty he did not politically identify himself as an abolitionist until it became a part of his party’s platform.

Columbus? We celebrate his “discovery” of the Americas. We celebrate colonization. And while, true, we wouldn’t be here had that not happened, minus European colonization the continent would be a diverse patchwork of Native American cultures — cultures which (though partially preserved, in some cases) were actively destroyed.

It is very true that there is no small amount of violence by Native Americans against whites in history. And not to write it off or downplay the very real cost in lives, but it must be understood in the context in which it existed. The process of settlement is a process of ethnic cleansing; Europeans and later white Americans laid claim to land that was historically notionally held by Native Americans and forcibly removed them. The violence committed against white settlers ultimately pales in comparison to that committed against Native Americans. While they may have targeted people we’d consider innocent — women and children, as they say — we have no basis to claim the high ground for our ancestors. Violence against Native Americans was totally indiscriminate, and while white settlers may not themselves have killed anyone they were — we still are, for the most part — living on land claimed by right of genocide.

Seattle is one of the places where this is particularly important. From dozens or even hundreds of Duwamish longhouses in what is now Seattle 150 years ago there’s now one. Naming a city after a Duwamish chief and then celebrating a man who symbolizes that very genocide is… well, rude.