The Problem with Columbus Day

by Memoirs Of A Dead Woman

From a protest in Seattle, WA against Columbus Day. (courtesy of NPR.COM)

[Image description: two people standing outside. Only their arms and parts of their legs are visible. One on the viewer’s left holds up a white sign written in black marker: “Rethink Columbus Day!!!” Below that, a wanted posted with the face of Christopher Columbus. Next to that, the person on the viewer’s right holds up a round, tan object. The front is painted with two drawings of birds: one black on top, and the other in red on the bottom.]

Today is Indigenous Peoples Day.

Notice I did not say Columbus Day.

Christopher Columbus did not discover anything except for new ways to expand Europe’s colonialist influence around the world: particularly, into the Americas. Celebrations of Columbus Day — and what many of us were taught in history classes as young children and teenagers — gloss over several very glaringly ugly aspects of the Italian explorer’s conqueror’s true history.