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Thom's blog
The Truth About Columbus Day - Why Are We Celebrating?
We should all be celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
Today, while millions across America are celebrating Columbus Day, the city of Seattle is celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day. That’s because last week, the Seattle city council unanimously passed a resolution to honor the contributions and cultures of Native Americans on the second Monday of October.
While Seattle’s decision may seem unusual, it’s actually part of growing trend. Many cities and states across the country have shifted away from celebrating Columbus Day, and that’s because more and more Americans are learning the real history behind Christopher Columbus and his “discovery.”
First of all, Columbus didn’t actually discover the Americas, despite what you may have been taught in elementary school. Thanks to archaeological evidence, we know now that there were many other groups who traveled to the Americas long before Columbus did.
For example, back in the 10th century, the Vikings had settlements in what are now Greenland and Newfoundland. And, DNA evidence proves that Polynesians came to South America almost a century before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. So, Columbus’ “discovery” of the Americas wasn’t really a discovery at all.
But enough about the discovery. Let’s talk about the man himself, and what he did to the indigenous peoples that he found when he arrived in the New World. When Columbus set sail in 1492, he was on the hunt for gold to bring back to Europe, and eventually landed on an island known as Hispaniola, which today is the home of the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
Unfortunately, Columbus didn’t discover much gold on Hispaniola, but he did find something as good as it, if not better: people. And Columbus thought that the indigenous people that he discovered would make great slaves.
-Thom
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