Native American Day

It's Native American Day, you fools.

I can honestly say hearing the words Columbus Day irritate me to no end. Granted I appreciate it for the days off, I just don't like the idea of "celebrating an invasion". Take everything you learned in school about Columbus discovering America and toss it out of the window. We glorify Columbus discovering America when really he took over America. He was not the first person to set foot on this land. Native Americans were in America long before Europeans got here and turned America into what we know today. In an interview with Suzan Shown Harjo, she says "The Europeans stole our land and killed our people". I also like how she says "We were in the way of Western Civilization and we were in the way of westward expansion. We suffered the excesses of "civilization"such as murder, pillage, rape, destruction of land, the destruction and pollution of the air."

Transform Columbus Day is a website geared towards gaining the respect that Native Americans Deserve. The home page says, 

"We've all been lied to about Columbus. 

Before Columbus sailed the Atlantic, he was a slave trader for the Portuguese, transporting West African people to Portugal to be sold as slaves. Columbus initiated the first Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Columbus, brother and son continued slave trading of indigenous peoples from the Americas to Europe, and from Africa to the Caribbean. Under his administration as viceroy and governor of the Caribbean Islands, 8 million people were killed, making his "contribution" to history the first mass genocide of indigenous peoples. The Columbus legacy is steeped in blood, violence and death. 

The Transform Columbus Day Alliance believes public holidays celebrating Columbus not only teach children to honor a cruel and brutal man, but they also encourage people to ignore and possibly support racist practices that are embedded in social, economic, political, and judicial systems.

The research below will guide you in critically evaluating the role of Christopher Columbus and his legacy of his oppression and cultural domination."

A lot of people have strong feelings regarding Columbus Day, or "Native American Day" Therefore, we need to tiptoe around the topic when teaching it. The article on Elementary School Issues gives a lot of great teaching ideas and resources on Columbus Day. On of the resources is a song by Buffy Sainte-Marie called "My Country, Tis of Thy People You're Dying". The song goes as follows: 

These sources are excellent because we do not want to teach our children lies growing up. As a teacher, I want my students to know the real affect of Columbus Day and what we are actually celebrating on a day off from school. We tend to shy away from the truth because it is too gory. Educators talk about pilgrims and indians with an innocent flare. However, we can teach them that Columbus wasn't a hero. We can still protect them from gruesome truths, but we don't need to paint Columbus as a hero who discovered America. By teaching our children about Native Americans and their culture, and then teaching the kids that Columbus drove them out of their home land is a much better way of teaching Columbus day than dressing up as pilgrims. We don't want our children growing up with lies, but that doesn't mean that we have to talk about the extents he went to in gruesome detail. As teachers it is our job to educate kids. With a topic such as Columbus day we just need to stay true to ourselves and we need to stay true to those who loss their lives at the expense of Columbus. However, we need to do it in a way where children can understand te effect Columbus had on the Natives without having to know gruesome details. 

I hope as an educator I stay true to myself and my beliefs. I don't want to have to teach a curriculum based off of lies. Educating is about helping students learn, and we do not want them growing up with misconceptions about this "holiday" that we celebrate. Columbus Day should be a tribute to the true Americans that perished because of our "western civilization". It should not be about celebrating a murderer.