Posted on 04/26/2014 6:41:05 AM PDT by massmike
It’s been debated for years, but now the city of Minneapolis has decided to change from celebrating Columbus Day to observing Indigenous People’s Day instead.
Columbus Day has been a federal holiday since 1937, though not all states observe it, including Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon, and South Dakota.
The day has long been a hot button issue over whether it is offensive to the American Indian culture to credit Christopher Columbus with the discovery of America.
On Friday, the Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously to approve the proposal to rename the day Indigenous People’s Day.
The designation would be observed on all city communications.
(Excerpt) Read more at valleynewslive.com ...
What fools. Yet another state to avoid.
The background to this notion is the genocide supposedly committed against the native inhabitants of the Americas.
And indeed by 1600 the native population had been reduced by in the neighborhood of 90% from what it was in 1492.
The problem with the theory that this constitutes genocide is that 90%+ of the death toll was the consequence of the merging of the Afro-Eurasian and American disease ecologies. The vast majority of those who died never saw a white guy.
The death toll would have been exactly the same had an Aztec ship sailed up the Thames and “discovered” Europe.
Maybe the mayor of Minneapolis and all the council members can honor indigenous tribes by replicating these wonderful ceremonies of old.
You've never been to Minneapolis I take it. I live in Wisconsin. From your moniker I gather you live in Massachusetts. I guarantee you many Minnesota and Wisconsin libs will give east coast libs a run for their money for the title of Wackiest Libs.
Shhhh....don’t give them ideas. They’re probably already thinking up a holiday to honor homosexuals. Everybody will be forced to watch the festivities and engage in the uh activities as mandated by our lib masters. Don’t think they wouldn’t want that to happen.
Actually, as you probably know, many Europeans during the middle ages were killed by mostly the same methods. A number of historians believe the various plagues like the Black Death and bubonic plagues that killed millions of Europeans were brought in from the east or other places outside Europe.
Mexicans call Columbus Day "Dia de la Raza." Most (not all) Mexicans have indigenous (pre-Columbus) ancestry but I don't think the rationale is quite the same as with "Indigenous People's Day."
Maybe they should just wait until Jesse Jacskon dies and they can rename Columbus Day after him (Jackson's birthday is October 8).
I just love the catchy word "indigenous" as in "Indigenous People's Day", don't you? Most people can't pronounce it, or spell it, let alone know what it means.
Real geniuses in the Land of Sky Blue Waters....and more evidence that liberalism is a mental disease.
Leni
Hopefully Miami won’t follow suit.
I’d hate sail in the Indigenous Peoples Day Regatta.
Actually, the Afro-Eurasian disease environment had evolved over thousands of years, with the epidemic diseases mostly evolving from diseases of domestic animals.
These diseases appeared at intervals of centuries, wiping out significant percentages of the population each time. Most of these epidemics are not recorded.
The relevant point is that the Spanish (and everybody else in the Old World) was descended from the survivors of those epidemics, and had acquired considerable immunity as a result.
When the disease ecologies of the two hemispheres merged, the native Americans were within a decade or two exposed to all the pathogens people of the old world had 10,000 years to adapt to. IOW, the Spanish were more highly evolved than the Indians, in their resistance to disease.
It is probable, though debated, that syphilis evolved in America and made the voyage the other way.
My basic point was that people from around the world have been subject to diseases that have wiped out large shares of various populations. It was not restricted to the new world. The leftists who love to condemn Europeans for every ill in the world refuse to recognize that millions of Euros have been killed either by disease or invaders from the east and south.
I quite agree. It is probable the proportion of those killed by these diseases in the Old and New Worlds are roughly the same. It’s just that in the Old World these deaths were spread out over perhaps ten thousand years and in the Americas they were concentrated in a century or three.
But you are quite correct that the normal liberal anti-Western meme that these are “European diseases,” as if their impacts on American natives is somehow white people are morally responsible for the deaths they caused.
Actual fact, of course, is that at the time nobody knew the mechanism by which these diseases were spread. In fact, both Europeans and natives thought in general that they were caused by spirits. Which if you think of germs as malevolent invisible entities that can be appeased by rituals involving proper sanitation, isn’t all than far off.
So once the populations of the two hemispheres began to mingle, the spread of diseases between them was quite inevitable and outside either group’s control or responsibility. In fact, after initial contact, most disease spread was from one native group to another, rather than directly from Europeans to natives.
Even today it would be quite difficult to prevent such a catastrophic population drop in a virgin field population suddenly exposed to multiple pathogens to which it has no immunity.
It is also probable that calling them “European diseases” is not only an attempt to project guilt but also technically inaccurate, as most if not all of them are Asian or African in origin. Which is why I’ve referred to them as Afro-Eurasian diseases.
Quite true, except it should be noted that Europeans have for the last thousand years or so been much better at killing Europeans than anybody else has.
However, from about 800 to the mid 900s Europe was invaded from multiple directions: Scandinavians from the north, Muslims from the south and southeast, Magyars and Bulgars from the east and northeast.
These invasions often apparently overlapped, with the Magyars raiding clear into France, and the Northmen getting into the Med.
In response to this situation of constant invasion, Europeans apparently developed a unique societal defense mechanism of heavy cavalry based on the feudal system.
From the folks who brought you Gov. Jesse Ventura and the ‘Honorable’ Sen. Smalley.
MN is lost. My mother grew up in Moose Lake. I grew up with stories of Vikings discovering America and Columbus Day was just a day off from school. I guess Scandinavians have no pull in MN.
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