Ay…. Columbus Day, no longer Columbus Day. Indigenous People’s Day. Fine, ok, but… you mean instead of celebrating the day “America was discovered” (which it wasn’t), now we celebrate the day the natives started losing their continent to a host of invaders? I don’t really think that’s an improvement.
We have a disturbing sensitivity to names, labels and words in this culture. As if the names (and/or the words) actually have meaning or power in themselves. Which they don’t.
Cristoforo Columbo(1) was an Italian, working for the Spanish queen, sailing in Templar ships, trying to discover a new trade route to India. His accidental discovery of a previously unknown continent is one of those flukes of history.
Well, not quite unknown. It had been “discovered” by the Europeans a unknown number of times previously, but it had simply not caught on before, so to speak. The word that there was an “unoccupied continent” had not become wide-spread, though only to the people’s of England, Spain and Portugal of that time could call a continent holding perhaps 50 million (maybe as many as 200 million, estimates vary) people seem “unoccupied” and up for grabs. It was probably all the trees and the lack of any major, filthy cities. But that’s Empire, for you.(2)
Personally, I never did see (even as a youngling) why Christopher Columbus (to go to mainstream spelling instead of how he might have spelled it himself) should have a national holiday. He was looking for something else; that is, he goofed and we gave him a national holiday? I liked having a day off from school, but it seemed a silly reason.
Secondly, I don’t see why it should be taken away from him, either, over something he didn’t do; the near genocide of the legal owners of the continent. That was carried out mostly by the Spanish and English, their descendants on this continent and their hirelings (such as the German hessians and others) and such and over centuries to come.
Ah well. As I said at the start, our culture seems overly sensitive to names.
Don’t call be Hispanic; I’ve never been any where near Spain.
Don’t call be Latino; I don’t speak Latin.
Don’t call me Anglo; I’ve never even been to England.
Don’t call me black; it’s anything from light mocha to a very dark mahogany.
Don’t call me white; it’s a light tan, perhaps even olive. (Truly white skin would be albino, and very rare and quite a serious condition.)
Don’t call me Sub-Saharan-African; I hate deserts and I’ve never anywhere near Africa.
Don’t call me Chair Person; it’s a very ungainly term (as well as insulting, as it directs attention specifically to the Chair-thing’s gender).
Don’t call me Homo Sapiens Sapiens; I’m really not wise at all (except, perhaps, that I know I’m not so wise(3)).
Don’t put up an “Ethnic Foods”(4) isle in the grocery store, as it marks all the rest of the store as “white.” (Well, as non-ethnic, which is… yes… ?)
By right of genetics, some folks are called Indigenous and have special rights and special recognition, while others do not. I was born in America, same as the ‘indigenous” folks alive today and I had no more to say about it than they had. I am legally a “native,” but not a Native, if you follow me.
I do not begrudge them those few and paltry special rights. In fact, I think the handling of it all is pretty poor and very insulting to everyone. That’s for another posting or six, though.
What’s my point here? Politics and accuracy of speech do not mix well. And that is my only point here. You can not take the words that seriously!
Don’t get caught up in the words, folks. They ain’t worth it!!! They’re just words and they have no meaning what so ever, save what you put on them when you hear them. Don’t twist what you heard around into — therefore — what you think I actually said!
As the old expression goes: “I know you think you heard what I said but I’m not sure you understand that what I said is not what I meant.”
Me, I don’t do labels. Myself, I’m simply “from Earth,” and that’s handicap (privilege?) enough for anyone.
Geez…
(1) That is, Christopher Columbus, though there is considerable controversy over what his name really was, or how he said / spelled his name. The way I have rendered it above may not be at all accurate. On the other hand we know “Christopher Columbus” is not accurate. So there.
(2) Further, South America may have been colonized / settled /influenced by Egyptian voyages across the Atlantic. Thor Heyerdahl and the RA expedition proved this possible, and archeological evidence suggests this also. Further, further, We also know that there were Africans in Brazil, Japanese in Peru. Further yet (and highly controversial) those who we call Native Americans may themselves have been “invaders” (from Asia, crossing the land bridge to Alaska when oceans levels were lower) and might have replaced (wiped out, or maybe just merged with) another “race” of peoples who were already there at the time, possibly from an even earlier migration. There is some evidence to support this, though it generally gets rapidly suppressed in the media. History is never what you think it is.
(3) Since our educational system (to use the phrase loosely) doesn’t teach Latin any more, let me say, for those who don’t know (and some of you do know), “sapiens” means wise. Homo Sapiens means (roughly) “wise man” [I say “roughly” because actually the Latin for man is “vir” and homo actually means more like “people”) and the proper name for our species [observe: ONE species, not several — though there is Neanderthal ancestry in all of us to some degree or other, obvious to the eye and verified per new genetics studies] is “homo sapiens sapiens” which is meant to mean “he who is wise and knows it” or “he who is self-aware” I’ve never been happy with that handle for what I am. Go figure.
(4) Ethnic… there’s another highly objectionable term, to me I mean. What’s it mean? Anybody but a White person. Yeah, well, alright. That’s not what it means, but that is how it’s used!
Proper definition: “relating to a population subgroup (within a larger or dominant national or cultural group) with a common national or cultural tradition.” [Thank you Oxford English Dictionary!]
Given that definition, you could say Lawyers are an ethnicity, as they most certainly have their own culture. Or football team owners, or basketball players. (Oh, fiddlesticks, yes, I know — “cultural tradition” does not mean an adopted professional culture, not by main-stream understanding, at least. But I do wonder about the accuracy of that assumption! Indeed I do.)
Are children of an “Old Money Family” an ethnicity? By strict definition, you betcha!