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The Historical Debt to
Native People Has Still Not Been Paid
The
Myth Keepers of Columbus
By ROBERT ROBIDEAU
In 1993, 500 years after European invaders
of the Americas had brought the first Native Americans to Europe
in chains, my plane landed in Barcelona, Spain, I had been invited
to the International Cultural Symposium to speak on behalf of
Leonard Peltier . The day after my arrival, I took a walk down
their famous Rambler to the Placa del Portal de la Pau where
I ran head long into a monument of Christopher Columbus. Build
for the World Exhibition in 1888, the iron column is an impressive
197 feet tall and weighs 205 tons. On top the column stands a
26 foot statue of Columbus with head sculptured high, positioned
to face out over its outstretched arm, with finger pointing over
the Mediterranean sea and out to the distant horizon toward the
Americas. As I moved around its base I discovered a series of
relief's depicting the "new lands." What I saw was
not the innocence that had been carved, but instead the first
stages of colonization, the rape and plunder of the land and
people of the Americas.
Christopher Columbus was born
in 1451 in Genoa, Italy. At age 14 he became a sailor, shipwrecked
off of Portugal in 1470, he remained until his idea to sail west
to India, known then as"Hindustan," was financed
by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain in 1492. He reached the Bahamas
on October 12th, visited Cuba and Hispaniola (Haiti), where he
left a small colony before returning to Spain on March 15th,
1493 bringing with him 6 captive Taino people, taken from the
Caribbean islands, who were presented to Ferdinand and Isabella
in the royal court of Barcelona as proof of his travel. A painting
that today hangs in (government building) show the Taino people
at the feet of the king and queen in servile postures of slaves.
The 6 Tainos never saw home again, their spirits still linger
in the streets of Barcelona.
In his delirium Columbus thought
he landed in Paradise. He wrote in his journal that Taínos
had beautiful, tall, slender olive bodies. They wore short haircuts
with a long hank at the back of the head. They were clean-shaven
and hairless. According to Columbus the Taíno tongue was
"gentle, the sweetest in the world, always with a laugh."
Friendly relations did not
last long, many Tainos were beaten and murdered. The Spanish
brought diseases with them that the Tainos lacked immunity to.
The weapons that the Spanish were far superior to the Tainos.
An estimated fifty thousand Tainos perished within two years
of Columbus landing. The Spanish jammed more then five hundred
Taino prisoners into a boat for Spain. They became homeless in
their own land. They were devastated by abuse, starvation, and
disease. Life was never the same for Indians of the Americas
after 1492. Puerto Rico, an Island once occupied by Tainos were
almost wiped out within two decades.
With the arrival of Columbus
begin the onslaught of genocide in the Americas that Europeans
only whisper about. The legacy of Columbus has kept Native Americans
at the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder. Population surveys
of the Americas estimates that at the time Columbus stumbled
onto the Americas 100 million people inhabited it, a count far
greater then that of all Europe in those times. More then 10
million resided in the United States, today less then a million
remain in the United States. Many tribes have long become decimated
and extinct.
The myth that continues to
be propagated is that Native Americans were savages and the civilization
brought by Europeans saved them. Reality is that the foods, medicines
and political structures of Native Nations in the Americas not
only saved Europeans from constant famine in Europe but also
taught them much about freedom and democracy, later adopted by
the forefathers of Euro Americans. The model of Iroquois Confederacy
(Haudenosaunee, also known as the League of Peace and Power)
enabled the United States to form in part its constitution which,
thanks to President Bush's Patriot Act, is well on the road to
become myth. Today, the myth of democracy, has become a perverted
tool to dominate, subjugate and colonize other countries around
the world such as Iraq and Palestine.
The United States held their
first celebration of the "discovery of America" in
New York, on October 12, 1792. At that time the only statue of
Columbus in existence was in New York. In 1876, Italian Americans
of Philadelphia erected a statue of Columbus in Fairmount Park.
In 1905 Italian Americans in Denver, Colorado were the first
to observe Columbus Day. It was not until September 1934 that
President Franklin D. Roosevelt made it national holiday. Finally,
Columbus Day became a federal legal holiday in 1971 after lobbying
from the National Columbus Day Committee. Columbus Day or "El
Dia de la Raza" has brought a wave of dissent across the
United States and Canada by many Native Americans who feel that
it perpetuates a myth that breeds bias and racism toward them.
Since 1970 Native Americans
have gathered to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving
in remembrance of the genocide of millions of Native Peoples,
theft of Native lands and the relentless assault on Native cultures
since Columbus open the flood gates to European invasions of
the Americas. It is curious that Columbus Day is, except for
religious holidays, the only historical event which all Pan-American
countries celebrate.
Since 1989 the Colorado AIM
chapter has lead a protest against the Columbus Day Parade in
Denver declaring, "As the original people of this land,
we cannot and will not, tolerate social and political festivities
that celebrate our genocide. We are committed to the active,
open and public rejection of disrespect and racism in its various
forms---including Columbus Day and Columbus Day Parades."
For these last 17 years they have tried to educate the general
public about their feelings for Columbus Day; they have protested,
blockaded and gone to jail for their efforts to stop this parade
of indoctrinated myth keepers.
The issue of Columbus and Columbus
Day is not easily resolvable in a society spoon feed on its propaganda
of myths and historical lies that propagate the idea that Europeans
were a superior race of two legged homo sapiens that came to
save the Indians from their barbaric ways. The Europeans who
came and settled invented and schooled the myth that they had
created the New World by their imaged "discovery, "
just as they had come to create the creation myth of its origins
known as the "Bearing Strait Theory." Native Americans
just had to have come from somewhere, but not the western hemisphere.
What good does Columbus Day
contribute by celebrating racist propaganda and myths that perpetuate
genocide in institutions of education. Nazi Germany is perfect
example of where such false, racist and opportunistic ideas lead.
The most popularly believed myth of scholars is that native Americans
were Jews. Louis Hennepin, in his New Discovery of a Vast
Country in America wrote, "These savages originally
sprung from the Jews," because they lived "in a form
of tents, like as did Jews" and they are "subtle and
crafty as Jews."
The first thought that crept
to mind was that the encounter with the statue of Columbus must
represent some sort of warning and I had better watch my step.
Sure enough in 1996 I was teased back to Barcelona, Spain where
I began a new life out of the reach of the FBI and the emergence
of fascist rumblings in the States.
Europe too, I felt, had a historical
debt and there was social need to transmit that Indian cultures
had not been completely destroyed. We still existed despite 500
years of genocide and so I founded an AIM museum to bring awareness
of it to Europeans so that they would not forget.
Robert Robideau is Co Director Leonard Peltier Defense
Committee. He can be reached at: robertrobideau@yahoo.com
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