"Don't celebrate the murder, but celebrate the victims," was themessage on Columbus Day last year at Humbolt State University inNorthern California.
Native Americans spoke about Columbus' actions, besides the onesthat I was raised to believe.
Why was an educational institution bashing this historicalfigure?
Turns out Columbus did more than "discover" America after theVikings.
"Within the entire Caribbean Islands, about 15 millionindigenous people are estimated to have been exterminated withinone generation of Columbus' arrival," according totransformcolumbusday.org.
When Columbus returned to Spain, he took back 550 Indiancaptives, 200 of whom died on the voyage, according to RonaldTakaki's book, a scholar of multiculturalism, "A DifferentMirror."
Columbus brought indigenous people to Spain against theirwill?
"These policies, established here, laid the foundation forextermination policies that Europeans used to justify theelimination of over 100 million native people throughout theWestern Hemisphere," according to transformcolumbusday.org.
What am I missing?
"The United States government had signed more than 400 treatieswith Indians and violated every single one," Howard Zinn, ahistorian, wrote in, "The Twentieth Century."
On Nov. 9, 1969, seventy-eight Native Americans landed onAlcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay to protest the quality of whatthe country defined as a reservation, Zinn wrote.
The Native Americans said the island resembled a reservation --isolated from modern facilities, no oil or mineral rights, noindustry and no educational facilities.
The federal government later removed the Natives fromAlcatraz.
But the History Channel's Web site words this eventdifferently.
"From 1969 to 1971 a group of Native American activists occupiedthe island in hopes of establishing a center there."
The question of Native Americans as mascots was also posed. Iused to dress up with friends in high school as our mascot, theLake Central Indian.
"How would you feel if you were called the White people? Or theBlack people? Or the Asians?" a native asked.
The Lake Central fighting White Women?
Memories of marching with my middle school band in the ChicagoColumbus Day Parade flooded my mind.
But as I reminisced, I realized that no one taught me thesetruths and how my actions could hurt others.
Who's to blame for my skewed education?
I heard an American Indian, John Sisson, talk in the villageabout native culture and values this Columbus Day.
"Be concerned about bringing knowledge to the next generation,"Sisson said.
Sisson had relatives who died on the Trail of Tears, the forcedmigration of 16,000 Cherokees, 4,000 of whom died, in 1838 fromGeorgia to Oklahoma.
This event fell under the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which wasdesigned by the federal government to relocate all tribes in theeastern United States to lands west of the Mississippi, accordingto Jennifer Eichstedt's text, "Race and Ethnicity." Indian RemovalAct?
"Driven by 'feelings of injustice,' President Andrew Jacksondeclared that he wanted 'to preserve this much-injured race,"Takaki wrote. Sounds like another president I know.
Maybe it's time we take a closer look at what we're studying andcelebrating. Why I wasn't informed of these truths until I left theMidwest, I'll never know.
Write to Melissa at mjskopelja@bsu.edu
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