Rally Decries Crimes of Columbus; Stresses Importance of Native Cultures

Cornell Daily Sun ^

[Chet 99]

Rally Decries Crimes of Columbus; Stresses Importance of Native Cultures

October 9, 2009 - 4:02am

By Margo Cohen Ristorucci

Propped against a podium in Ho Plaza, a poster of Christopher Columbus sat with the message “Hate, Lies, Torture, Slavery and Oppression” inscribed along his face. Anticipating the Oct. 12 holiday, Native American Students at Cornell organized a rally yesterday called "Indigenous Day Rally: Rethinking Columbus."

Alia Jones ’10, co-chair of NASAC, explained that the event was aimed to both challenge Columbus Day and to raise awareness about present indigenous communities.

“Question: why should the United States of America celebrate Columbus Day?” Prof. Eric Cheyfitz, English, the first speaker and director of the American Indian Program, asked the crowd. “I teach Columbus’s journals as examples of the beginning of genocide in the Americas.”

Four to five million people were living in the United States in 1492 compared to the 250,000 at the end of the 19th century, according to Cheyfitz. Today, 4.1 million Native Americans live in the United States, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.

Prof. Jolene Rickard, history of art and curator of “Our Lives: Contemporary Life and Identities” for the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, attributed the United States’ current wealth to 13th-century Native American resources.

“What was 1491 like? What was this moment in time before the impact of globalization and modernity? That moment is the reason the United States is powerful — because Columbus encountered land that was fecund, not pillaged,” Rickard said.

Upon landing on what is now the Dominican Republic, Columbus disrupted this natural environment in his pursuit of profit. Cheyfitz described some of Columbus’s colonial methods, such as cutting off Taínos’ hands if they failed to produce handfuls of gold.

“Spaniards documented these practices like Congress today documents atrocities as if it’s natural,” Cheyfitz said.

Cheyfitz provided a series of statistics to illuminate some of these current “atrocities”: the top 1 percent of Americans have 35 percent of accumulated wealth; 36.5 million to 37 million people live in poverty; the United States boasts the highest incarceration rates in the world; the World Health Organization ranked the U.S. 37th in regard to international health; and the U.S. owns 70 percent of the arms trade, making it the biggest seller of weapons of mass destruction.

Cheyfitz and Rickard, among other speakers, advised the audience to draw lessons from rich, indigenous cultures to counter contemporary problems.

“My ancestors buried their weapons of war under the tree of peace, the white pine … I exist as a Haudenosaunee woman because [they] gave their lives so that I can carry on the message of freedom to the next generation,” Rickard said.

Looking toward the future, speakers used the upcoming holiday to initiate a discussion about ethnicity and community at Cornell. Ken Glover, current resident house director at Ujamaa, spoke about the dangers of program house consolidation. He hopes that Cornell is more adept at keeping its promise to diversity than the United States upheld its treaties to Native Americans. Benjamin García grad, a participant in the event, agreed with Glover’s concerns.

“Cornell likes to pretend it is more diverse than it actually is. The issue is much larger than just getting [minority students] in here — it’s about retaining people who come from such different backgrounds,” García said.

Representatives from Asian Pacific Americans for Action encouraged solidarity between minority groups on campus.

“The fruits of oppression — if we can call them fruits — are rooted in the same, dirty soil,” said Lawrence Lan ’12, Sun staff writer and treasurer of the APAA. Lan drew connections between Columbus’s treatment of Native Americans and Filipino resistance to Ferdinand Magellan in 1521.

While the event began with 16 people, it gradually amassed a crowd of over 40. After the speeches, participants enjoyed Spoken Word poetry and falafel from the nearby Sukkah station.

“I hope students use the critical thinking skills they’ve learned here at Cornell and go home and continue this conversation with family and friends,” said Kakwireiosta Hall, residence hall director at Akwe:kon and advisor for NASC.

[fso301]

“Question: why should the United States of America celebrate Columbus Day?”

Well, perhaps because it marks the beginning of the end of the age of rule by savage stone age cultures engaged in continual warfare and genocide against each other.

[whitedog57]

Power. NAI are pissed because they can’t commit THEIR atrocities anymore and don’t control the land. Just pure jealousy.

[Dallas59]

Cannibalism, torture, human sacrifice, warfare....were a part of “indigenous American” peoples life before Columbus.

[Berlin_Freeper]

A Country of Vast Designs
James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent
By Robert W. Merry
This edition: Hardcover, 592 pages
Availability: Ships on or around November 3, 2009

When James K. Polk was elected president in 1844, the United States was locked in a bitter diplomatic struggle with Britain over the rich lands of the Oregon Territory, which included what is now Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Texas, not yet part of the Union, was threatened by a more powerful Mexico. And the territories north and west of Texas -- what would become California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and part of Colorado -- belonged to Mexico. When Polk relinquished office four years later, the country had grown by more than a third as all these lands were added. The continental United States, as we know it today, was established -- facing two oceans and positioned to dominate both.

In a one-term presidency, Polk completed the story of America's Manifest Destiny -- extending its territory across the continent, from sea to sea, by threatening England and manufacturing a controversial and unpopular two-year war with Mexico that Abraham Lincoln, in Congress at the time, opposed as preemptive.

Robert Merry tells this story through powerful debates and towering figures -- the outgoing President John Tyler and Polk's great mentor, Andrew Jackson; his defeated Whig opponent, Henry Clay; two famous generals, Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott; Secretary of State James Buchanan (who would precede Lincoln as president); Senate giants Thomas Hart Benton and Lewis Cass; Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun; and ex-president Martin Van Buren, like Polk a Jackson protégé but now a Polk rival.

This was a time of tremendous clashing forces. A surging antislavery sentiment was at the center of the territorial fight. The struggle between a slave-owning South and an opposing North was leading inexorably to Civil War. In a gripping narrative, Robert Merry illuminates a crucial epoch in U.S. history.

[230FMJ]

The “Howard Zinn” version of American history. Pure Marxist propaganda.

[SamAdams76]

Funny, I never see these hand-wringing liberals yielding up their own properties (that most of them inherited) to the Indians. I take it that any “native Americans” setting up a teepee in Margo Cohen Ristorucci’s backyard would immediately be arrested for trespassing.

[fatnotlazy]

A few days ago, I saw an episode of the Sopranos where some Native Americans protested an upcoming Columbus Day Parade. Tony’s thugs came along and “fixed the problem.”

Maybe that’s what’s needed here. These folks should get a visit from Tony’s boys. *smile*

[ChiMark]

Yeah, the culture was so advanced that the “wheel” was
unknown to them.

Where’s the holy land lease that gave the Indians exclusive rights to north America?

[muir_redwoods]

The Native Americans had the Americas for perhaps 40,000 years and worked their way all the way up to the neolithic. Europeans had the continents for 500 years and left footprints on the moon.

The Europeans acquired the land of the Americas under the real estate transfer rules in place at the time and those used by the Natives; conquest

[Rome2000]

Awesome!!

Too bad she can't drive out the communist pussies from our universities as well.

[Right Wing Assault]

Your first act of reparation would be to get on a boat and head back to your ancestral land.

[Covenantor]

muir_redwoods said:

The Native Americans had the Americas for perhaps 40,000 years and worked their way all the way up to the neolithic.

Europeans had the continents for 500 years and left footprints on the moon.

The Europeans acquired the land of the Americas under the real estate transfer rules in place at the time and those used by the Natives; conquest.

After my first pot of coffee I'm going to figure out how to use your words to the best effect today.

Well said sir.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

When people ask me if there was ever a Democrat I would have voted for, I say Yes! The last one was James K. Polk. They say Who?

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

Representatives from Asian Pacific Americans for Action encouraged solidarity between minority groups on campus.

And pray they can keep using this phoney guilt to split White people almost down the middle so they can plunder (e.g. "reparations" and "redistribution".)

[saneright]

“They should get down on their knees and thank God that men of the West conquered their heart-chopping, blood-drinking, cannibalistic Stone Age ancestors.”

You forgot to mention that with the exception of the Aztecs and Incas the indigenous peoples had no idea how to cultivate land for agriculture or harness the natural resources that were staring them in their faces.

[Northern Yankee]

Excellent information a few weeks back about how Columbus sought to bring Christianity to the East Indies. (Obviously he ended up somewhere else.)Very devout in his Catholic faith.

His writings and log entries on the journey to the New World speak of spreading the faith and living the Gospel of the Lord.

Unfortunately much of the education about Columbus has done him no favors.

[Carley]

Seems to me the American indian’s penchant for scalping their enemies was the forerunner of the islamic jihadists of today.

[Non-Sequitur]

“Hate, Lies, Torture, Slavery and Oppression”

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that what the Aztecs did to anyone who got in their way, including whoever had been living in the area that the Spanish landed on in 1519?

[ladyvet]

And if I see one more Franklin Mint product that shows a beautiful Indian maiden romping around the woods with wolves, coyotes, or eagles I'm going to puke. Yeah, that's how it was until you white b*stards showed up!

[Lion Den Dan]

Cheyfitz and Rickard, among other speakers, advised the audience to draw lessons from rich, indigenous cultures to counter contemporary problems.

Right, continue to slaughter your enemies, eat their hearts and other body parts, sell captives into slavery, be totally at the mercy of the climate. Indians never had opportunitys so good as today.