|
Thom's blog
We Shouldn't Honor Genocidal Colonialists-End Columbus Day Now
 Today, while millions of people across America are celebrating Columbus Day, the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico is doing something different -- it’s celebrating Indigenous People’s Day.
It’s using the second Monday in October as a chance to raise awareness about the cultural contributions of the people who lived on this continent long before the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria crossed the Atlantic.
This decision might seem unusual, but it’s actually part of a growing trend.
Over the past few years, a number of cities and states have stopped celebrating Columbus Day and started doing what Albuquerque is doing -- celebrating Indigenous People’s Day [[http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/10/12/3711539/indigenous-peoples-day/]].
The reason they’re doing this simple: more and more people are realizing that the traditional story of Christopher Columbus and his so-called “discovery” of the Americas is a lie.
First off, Columbus didn’t actually discover the Americas, despite what you may have been taught in elementary school.
Hundreds of millions of Native peoples already called North and South America home when Columbus made landfall in the Caribbean islands, and thanks to archaeological evidence, we know now that many other groups - including Europeans - traveled to the Americas long before Columbus.
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 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 these people would make great slaves.
When Columbus met the Taino natives of Hispaniola, he wrote back to the Spanish monarchs funding his voyage, saying that,
“They are well-built, with good bodies and handsome features...They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane...They would make fine servants…With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want. Here there are so many of these slaves...although they are living things they are as good as gold...”
Over time, Columbus’ real actions in the Americas have been replaced by a warm-and-fuzzy coloring book story of a bold and brave explorer who set out to discover a new world.
But in reality, as we have learned from writings of Christopher Columbus’ own men, the “bold explorer” raped, pillaged, enslaved and slaughtered people just to get rich.
|
Tonight on The Big Picture on RT TV at 7pm and 10pm... What AL Could Learn From CA About Voting Rights (check your local listings for stations or stream at RT or Free Speech TV, and catch past shows on Youtube)
 Be sure to check out our newest video: RESTORATION - narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio & Thom Hartmann, directed by Leila Conners / Visit GreenWorldRising.org to check out all the videos: CARBON, LAST HOURS & GREEN WORLD RISING - narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio & Thom Hartmann, directed by Leila Conners
Need to Know: The Dysfunctional Partisan Benghazi Gang
- Ari Rabin-Havt, -The Agenda/SiriusXM Progress/The Benghazi Hoax 
Screwed: The GOP Speaker Job Sucks
- Neil McCabe, One America News Network
Plus, Sentencing Reform is Coming
- Maya Schenwar, Truthout/Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn't Work and How We Can Do Better
Best of the Rest: What AL Could Learn From CA About Voting Rights
- Katherine Culliton Gonzalez, Advancement Project
- Myrna Pérez, Deputy Director-Brennan Center for Justice
Plus, Bernie Sanders Vows to Stop ‘Disastrous’ TPP Deal
- Patty Lovera, Food & Water Watch
Daily Take: We Shouldn't Honor Genocidal Colonialists-End Columbus Day Now
|
The Daily Stack 
Hour One: Why Honor Genocidal Maniacs...End Columbus Day Now?
Quote: " They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned..." - Christopher Columbus. Quote: " I was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my desire. She was unwilling, and so treated me with her nails that I wished I had never begun..." - Michele de Cuneo. Quote: " I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves, by the generation of $76. to acquire self government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be that I live not to weep over it." - Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes.
Article: " 2nd Amendment". A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Quote: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana.
Economic and Labor News
|
|
Tuesday on The Thom Hartmann Program, 12-3pm ET
And, the best of the rest of the news along with your calls right here on...
The Thom Hartmann Program, Occupying The Media 3 hours a day 5 days a week" for "we the people"
And don't forget...Democracy is NOT a spectator sport...it begins with you...
|
 Please support the Hunter School, a unique therapeutic boarding school for young children diagnosed with ADHD, Anxiety, Sensory, Mood and related conditions... |
|
|
|
Thom's Poll
Should Columbus Day be renamed Indigenous Peoples Day?
|
|
Watch & Listen to Thom
Conversations w/Great Minds P1: The Influence Machine - The U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Conversations w/Great Minds P2: The Influence Machine - The U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Rumble: Will Hillary Flip-Flop on the TPP?
Rumble - How to Fund a Green New Deal
Or watch the Full "Big Picture" Show...
Full Show 10/9/15: The GOP’s Chaos Caucus Takes Down McCarthy
Tonight’s Big Picture Rumble talks the House Speaker debacle, whether Wall Street will pay to fix our nation’s crumbling infrastructure, and Hillary finally making a decision on the TPP. Thom talks with journalist Alyssa Katz, author of the new book “THE INFLUENCE MACHINE: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Corporate Capture of American Life” in tonight’s Conversations with Great Minds.
Why Honor Genocidal Maniacs? End Columbus Day Now...
Thom Hartmann on Economic & Labor News: 10/12/15
Democrats Have a Bigger Vocabulary than Republicans
Ohio Lawmaker: Republicans Shouldn't be Allowed to Adopt...
What a Protester at a Bernie Sanders Rally Looks Like
New DNA Test Reveals if You are Gay
The NRA is Breaking Federal Election Laws!
CIA: Augusto Pinochet Ordered Assasination on U.S. Soil
Weighing in on Citizens United
|
|
|
