Posted on 10/12/2009 12:41:29 AM PDT by 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.
“participants enjoyed Spoken Word poetry and falafel from the nearby Sukkah station.”
Falafel!??! No Indians here. You can’t have a pow-wow in the north without fry bread and venison and wild rice stew, with fresh venison provided by native hunters. Lots of make believe “Indians” have infiltrated the northern reserves, especially smelly, white hippy pretend “Indians.” You see these wretched communists come around pow-wows in MI looking for an “Indian” name and an invite to a sweat lodge.
The midiwin (Anishinabe medicine society) send out jokesters to assign them a name like “Windigo,” meaning a cannibal ghost that eats lost souls. Then “Mr. Windigo” is told to walk to the southwest and visit those tribes to continue his “spiritual” journey.
There should be a Hernan Cortez Day.
Famed Lakota warrior Crazy Horse’s first kill was a woman, if he were an American soldier he would be facing life in prison.
I just get so frustrated when I read this crap. Why don’t they take a look at the real time problems on the reservations today? Particularly Pineridge and the Rosebud?
50% of the children there are physically and sexually abused! Honor your ancestors and fix this horrendous problem for God’s sake. Not to mention the rampet alcohol and drug abuse, unemployment at 90%. Start helping your people now.
Their energy is being wasted by focusing on crap that happened hundreds of years ago.
Today we were greeted with a front page AP story in the local press about how differently Columbus is seen in today's schools: egotistic, bossy, and mean spirited. (Hum, sounds like a Naval Captain to me.) Also included was the bringing of diseases that devastated the locals. (I thought that came later, but who am I to quibble). Lastly, how could he discover something where people were already living? (I guess those pacific islands like Hawaii that were “discovered” by a host of other sailors were also not actually discovered.)
All this makes me want to go out and get a copy of his flag and fly it next year.
The campus indoctrination camps are doing their jobs I see. Vince
These people are just like the idiots from Detroit. They just have a bit more money.
And of course these natives were so peaceful and they never fought amongst themselves. /s
Thanks for the ping.
Long live the Nina, Pinta and the Santa Maria!
Don't forget that the victors (us white Europeans) get to write the history. I wonder about your characterization here. If you read about the Lewis and Clark expedition, you can get sort of a random picture of what these inhabitants were like. My recollection is that the expedition only had trouble once; which isn't too bad considering they were a large group of funny looking strangers.
As for rallying against the supposed crimes of Columbus, I would think a rally would be more appropriately directed toward that guy born on February 12th.
ML/NJ
What happened to those peoples was a great tragedy, but not one that anyone alive today has to answer for.
I use these kinds of protests as teachable moments for my kids. I explain the utter foolishness of the exercise, and declare it to be a self-administered intelligence test, that the participants failed.
**As for rallying against the supposed crimes of Columbus,**
You’d think they’d LOVE COLUMBUS, he’d have been the perfect college student.
COLUMBUS did NOT KNOW where he was going.
When he returned, he could not say WHERE he’d BEEN.
And he did it ALL with a GOVERNMENT GRANT.
If it wasn’t Columbus looking for new trade routes, it would have been someone else, sometime else.
The Native Americans aren’t native anyway. They just arrived earlier and one wonders what they would have done to any culture they had stumbled upon considering their history.
As my daughter put it, it was just the roll of the anthropologic dice that they took such a beating. If they had had the technology and weren’t wiped out about en masse by disease, American history sure would have been different.
My understanding is that the term *Iroquois* is Algonquin meaning *real snakes*.
Decades ago, when I visited my relatives out west, my aunt told me that when uranium was discovered on the Navajo reservations, many of the chiefs were living ostentatiously, while the rest of the people on the reservations were living in poverty.
The money never filtered down, apparently.
Some tribes were peaceful, some were warriors and damn good ones...
Sure, just like how Europe was, some nations just wanted to live in peace, some wanted to build an empire, but this idea that the natives only turned savage because of the white man is insane.
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