It is as predictable as any other annual US holiday or commemoration: National mainstream media devote sound bites to Columbus Day and the meaning of Christopher Columbus’ voyage to the “New World,” while Columbus Day sales hit the stores. Meanwhile, op-eds and letters to the editor register Indigenous people’s objections to Columbus as worthy of commemoration. In recent Octobers, it seems, asking Indigenous people what they think of Columbus Day has also become a sound bite.
In the last few years, however, increasingly perceptible is an Indigenous resolve to refuse to accept the American exceptionalist narrative that the United States is a nation that embraces multiculturalism. In fact, it is still common practice today to deny that Indigenous peoples were the first victims of the US’s genocidal policies, and that those surviving Natives, once militarily subjugated, were then subjected to ethnic cleansing, which is more commonly known as “assimilation.”
Once Indigenous reactions to nationalist US forms of remembrance — whether they be histories, national event reenactments, or monuments and statutes — are registered, apologists for the US, having acknowledged “two perspectives” or “two sides,” intimate that a level of understanding has been reached, and that we might move to some sort of reconciliation and healing. However, as the growing Indigenous liberation movement has emphasized, reconciliation and healing cannot take place until the US stops celebrating Indigenous genocide. As historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz makes clear in An Indigenous People’s History of the United States, since its founding, the US and its settler citizens have habitually committed crimes of inhumanity against Indigenous peoples in order to lay claim to their lands and territories, and have systematically laid waste to these lands as they extract natural resources with little regard for the treatment of Mother Earth.
Ni kama kutabirika kama likizo nyingine yoyote ya kila mwaka ya Marekani au ukumbusho: National vyombo vya habari kuu kujitolea sauti bites kwa Columbus Day na maana ya Christopher Columbus safari ya "New World", wakati Columbus Day mauzo hit maduka. Wakati huohuo, makala za maoni na barua kwa mhariri huorodhesha pingamizi la wenyeji kwa Columbus kuwa la thamani ya kukumbukwa. Katika Oktoba ya hivi karibuni, inaonekana, kuuliza Wenyeji wa Asili kile wanachofikiri juu ya Siku ya Columbus pia imekuwa sauti ya kuumwa. Hata hivyo, katika miaka michache iliyopita, imekuwa ikionekana zaidi na zaidi azimio la wenyeji la kukataa kukubali hadithi ya kipekee ya Marekani kwamba Marekani ni taifa ambalo linakubali utamaduni mbalimbali. "Hata hivyo, bado ni kawaida leo kukataa kwamba wenyeji walikuwa wa kwanza wa Marekani ""sera ya mauaji ya kimbari,"" na kwamba wale wenyeji waliookoka, mara moja militarily subjugated, walikuwa kisha chini ya ""usafishaji kikabila,"" ambayo ni zaidi inajulikana kama ""assimilation.""" Hata hivyo, kama vile harakati ya kukua ya uhuru wa wenyeji imesisitiza, upatanisho na uponyaji hauwezi kutokea mpaka Marekani isiache kusherehekea mauaji ya kimbari ya wenyeji. "Mwanahistoria Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz anasema katika kitabu chake ""An Indigenous People's History of the United States"" kwamba tangu kuanzishwa kwa Marekani, Marekani na wananchi wake wamekuwa wakifanya uhalifu dhidi ya watu wa asili ili kudai ardhi na maeneo yao, na wamekuwa wakiharibu ardhi hizo kwa utaratibu kwa kuondoa maliasili bila kujali sana utunzaji wa Mama Dunia."