Sometimes observers from Europe look at America and see our behavior in a way in a new and illuminating way. Slavoi Zizek in an article originally published in IN THESE TIMES on Oct 13, comments on the "news" reportage about the destruction of New Orleans and the calculated attempt to portray the people of New Orleans as looters and rapist. He writes:
"We all remember the reports on the disintegration of public order, the explosion of black violence, rape and looting. However, later inquiries demonstrated that, in the large majority of cases, these alleged orgies of violence did not occur: Non-verified rumors were simply reported as facts by the media. For example, on September 3, the Superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department told The New York Times about conditions at the Convention Center: "The tourists are walking around there, and as soon as these individuals see them, they're being preyed upon. They are beating, they are raping them in the streets." In an interview just weeks later, he conceded that some of his most shocking statements turned out to be untrue: "We have no official reports to document any murder. Not one official report of rape or sexual assault."
Why? Zizek continues:
"But we are not dealing here only with good old racism. Something more is at stake, a fundamental feature of the emerging "global" society. On September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers were hit. Twelve years earlier, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. November 9 announced the "happy '90s," the Francis Fukuyama dream of the "end of history": the belief that liberal democracy had, in principle, won, that the search is over, that the advent of a global, liberal world community lurks just around the corner, that the obstacles to this ultra-Hollywood happy ending are merely empirical and contingent (local pockets of resistance where the leaders did not yet grasp that their time is over). In contrast, 9/11 is the main symbol of the end of the Clintonite happy '90s, of the forthcoming era in which new walls are emerging everywhere, between Israel and the West Bank, around the European Union, on the U.S.-Mexico border. The rise of the populist New Right is just the most prominent example of the urge to raise new walls?
Here is a link to whole article.
Against Racism and Oppression: October 2005 Archives
If you think that religious humanism is an invention of dominant culture intellectuals rooted in the European enlightenment, then you might be surprised by this anthology of writings. Anthony B. Pinn has assembled a collection which includes slave narratives, selections from novels, essays, and theological analysis that shows a religious humanism that arose out struggle for liberation of African Americans in the United States, a religious humanism that is engaged in an ongoing dialogue with African American Christianity and earth centered spirituality. By these hands: A documentary history of African American Humanism is essential reading for Unitarian Universalists who seek to understand the intellectual history of the United States, and the contribution of African Americans to that history. Discover a rich, engaged religious humanism in the writings of Frederick Douglas, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, William Jones, Richard Wright and many other writers. The writings reveal a different struggle than the one usually raised by Enlightenment based "scientific humanism." The struggle for African American religious humanism is not "does God exist given science," but rather "is God an old white man." This humanism does not seek to liberate from "superstition" as much as it seeks freedom from submission to the dominant culture's God game. Reading these writers one receives the gift of a liberating theology not imported from another land, and not rooted in an alienating supernaturalism.
The publishers blurb sums the book up in this manner: "The Black church is often praised for its contribution to Black culture and politics. More recently Islam has been recognized as an important force in African American liberation. Anthony Pinn's new anthology By These Hands demonstrates the crucial, often overlooked role that Humanism has played in African American struggles for dignity, power and justice. Pinn collects the finest examples of African American Humanism and shows how it's embrace by a variety of prominent figures in African American thought and letters has served as the basis for activism and resistance to American racism and sexism."
"Pinn uncovers little known treasures of African American Literature such as The Slave Narrative of James Hay, where an abused slave decides to rely on himself, rather than God, for deliverance from the horrors of slavery, and a letter from Frederick Douglass which scandalized his religious friends by proclaiming that "One honest Abolitionist was a greater terror to slaveholders than whole acres of camp-meeting preachers shouting glory to God."
"David Hilliard Eaton (1932-1992) was the first African American to serve as senior minister in a large Unitarian Universalist church. During his tenure, All Souls Church, Unitarian in Washington, DC became a center of community service and social action, and was the first congregation within the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) to achieve a racially balanced black and white membership."
From the Dictionary of Unitarian Universalist Biography
I reprint this prayer poem by David Eaton in preparation for All Soul's Day.
A Common Destiny
All living substance, all substance of Energy,
and Being,
and Purpose,
are united and share the same destiny
All people,
those we love and those we know not of
are united and share the same destiny.
Birth -to- Death
this unity we share with
the Sun,
Earth
our Brothers and Sisters,
Strangers
Flowers of the field,
Snowflakes
Volcanoes and Moon Beams.
Birth-Life-Death
Unknown-Known-Unknown.
I pray that we will know the Awe
and not fall into the pit of intellectual arrogance
in attempting to explain it away.
The mystery can be our substance.
May we have the faith to accept this wonderful Mystery
and build upon its everlasting Truth.
We do not wake up each day with a blank mind. Through a life time we have formed opinions, made judgements and acquired facts that inform how we see and understand the world. We "construct" a viewpoint, usually in the form of a story about who we are and how we related to the percieved world.
We don't do this alone. We call our shared "constructions of reality" social constructions. Race is a social construction.
Biologicially, we are one species, with no significant differences between all the peoples of this planet. Yet, people who live in communities, and these people share social constructions that have been passed down from generation to generation. Race was an idea that was constructed in three hundred years ago, yet it still informs peoples consciousness at present.
White people is a social construction. People of color is a social construction. White means not colored. Colored means not white. Circular. Dumb.
Who is and who isn't "white" has evolved over time. I was a child in an "interracial" family, in Jim Crow Texas. Interracial marriages were illegal in some states and not in others, and interracial couples moved from states that recognized their marriages to states that would not have allowed them to be married, but did not challenge their marriages if they didn't raise a fuss. Texas was a let sleeping dogs lay state. Lots of Texans had native ancestors and they were hoping that dog would stay asleep for a long, long time. Don't stir up trouble now....
In one context, I was considered "white" and in one context I was considered "mixed blood" and non - white. Go see my Father's family and we were Indians.
Racism was real, and it was painful. But from the perspective one little boy, it was based on make believe differences.
Social construction is a much more dignified way of saying "make believe," of saying that race is more than a bad idea. But "make believe" can hurt. Sometimes I think "make believe" hurts more than genuine differences.
Robert Williams writes:
At the dawn of Renaissance Europe's discoveries in the New World and conquest of the American Indian, Europeans already enjoyed the singular advantage of possessing a systematically elaborated legal discourse on colonialism. This discourse, first successfully deployed during the medieval Crusades to the Holy Land [and , I should add, eventually to the English colonization of Ireland] unquestioningly asserted that normatively divergent non-Christian peoples could rightfully be conquered, and their lands could be lawfully confiscated by Christian Europeans, enforcing their particular vision of a universally binding natural law. This is to say that for centuries our churches have been involved in the colonization and conquest of the world on behalf of Europe.
Contemporary religious liberals too often disparage systematic thinking, rationalizing their retreat from the task of articulating their values to the vagaries of post modernism. But as Lakoff and others have pointed out unless those who hope for a more open, and humane society begin to articulate where they stand on moral and ethical questions, those who advocate authoritarian. sectarian and corporate values will win the battle of "framing" the big questions of the day. The moral value expressed above, a.k.a. Christian triumphalism is alive and well in our country today. What is the religious liberal response?
The churches of New England preached the rationalization that Williams cited above to justify the genocide of the Natives that the Pilgrims and Puritans encountered. These Christians saw themselves as the children of God coming into the Promised Land, and the indigenous people of what they called the New English colonies as "Canaanites." Such is the first chapter in the history of the "free church" in America.
Williams quote is from his The American Indian in Western Legal Thought; The Discourse of Conquest (Oxford University Press, 1990) and can be found on p.1. I followed a foot by George Tinker, whose article in Soul Work: anti-racist theologies in dialogue refers to Williams.
James Cone begins his essay in Soul Work; Anti Racist Theologies in Dialogue with two quotes. The first is by Dietrich Bonhoeffer who wrote:
Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.
and the second quote is from Martin Luther King, Jr. who wrote:
We have to repent . . . not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.
We are familiar with the pejorative "Good German" which refers to those remained silent in the face of the holocaust. What evils are we called to prophesy against? What does it mean to be a "Good American?"
The Civil Rights movement was attacked for extremism, many "friends of the Negro' advised a gradual, moderate approach, and argued that mass demonstrations and boycotts would only alienate moderate "white" opinion. Meanwhile the Klu Klux Klan and the White Citizen's Councils were organizing violence against men, women and children who stood for voter's rights and access to public institutions.
Martin Luther King, Jr. challenged his listeners with this response; "The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or the the extension of justice?"
Given our cultures capacity to marginalize those who stand against its oppressive norms could you be an extremist for love? Institutionalized religion tends to be a mechanism for conformity, and submission to the "way things are." This despite the fact that most significant religious leaders in all traditions urged non conformity to the prevailing standards of an unjust world. We recall Paul of Tarsus "be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind."
How does liberal religion help us take a personal stand for justice? How does it hinder us in taking that stance?
Francis Ellen Watkins Harper 1825-1911
"Harper died on 22 February 1911, nine years before women gained the right to vote. Her funeral service was held at the Unitarian Church on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia" where she was a member. She had ties to the Unitarians going back to her young adult years when she worked as an abolitionist. The quotes are from UU Dictionary of Biography article on Harper by Janeen Grohsmeyer
http://www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/francesharper.html
"A pioneering journalist, author of fiction and poetry, and a professional lecturer, Frances Harper had a remarkable life. Active in abolitionism, suffrage, and the temperance movement, she lived long enough to see her efforts rewarded. She gets credit for introducing the tradition of African American protest poetry. Famous during her lifetime, Harper used her prestige and writings to fight racism and also make strong feminist statements."
Paul P. Rueben; PAL: Perspectives in American Literature - A Research and Reference Guide: Chapter 5: Late Nineteenth Century - Frances Ellen Watkins
Harper (1825-1911)
She wrote: "We want more soul, a higher cultivation of all spiritual faculties. We need more unselfishness, earnestness, and integrity. We need men and women whose hearts are the homes of high and lofty enthusiasm and a noble devotion to the cause of emancipation, who are ready and willing to lay time, talent, and money on the altar of universal freedom."
Bury Me In A Free Land
Make me a grave where'er you will,
In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill;
Make it among earth's humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.
I could not rest if around my grave
I heard the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above my silent tomb
Would make it a place of fearful gloom.
I could not rest if I heard the tread
Of a coffle gang to the shambles led,
And the mother's shriek of wild despair
Rise like a curse on the trembling air.
I could not sleep if I saw the lash
Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,
And I saw her babes torn from her breast,
Like trembling doves from their parent nest.
I'd shudder and start if I heard the bay
Of bloodhounds seizing their human prey,
And I heard the captive plead in vain
As they bound afresh his galling chain.
If I saw young girls from their mother's arms
Bartered and sold for their youthful charms,
My eye would flash with a mournful flame,
My death-paled cheek grow red with shame.
I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might
Can rob no man of his dearest right;
My rest shall be calm in any grave
Where none can call his brother a slave.
I ask no monument, proud and high,
To arrest the gaze of the passers-by;
All that my yearning spirit craves,
Is bury me not in a land of slaves.
you lay buried for two thousand years
until a farmer saw you in a furrow
and claimed you for his own
now you cry, still bleeding,
for the sins of Columbus and Reagan
and the wandering spirit of your creator
and you stand, sacred and disciplined,
sharing your vast knowledge with arrogant strangers
who cannot understand the simplicity of your message:
turn off your computers and listen,
just listen
American Indian Resource Directory http://www.indians.org/index.html
A resource for human rights activists from the movement to transform Columbus Day.
1. Question: What's Wrong with Christopher Columbus?
Answer: We've all been lied to about Columbus. Before Columbus sailed the Atlantic, he was a slave trader for the Portuguese, transporting West African people to Portugal to be sold as slaves. Columbus initiated the first Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Columbus, his brother, and his son all continued slave trading of indigenous peoples from the Americas to Europe and from Africa to the Caribbean. Under his administration as viceroy and governor of the Caribbean Islands, 8 million people were killed, making his "contribution" to history the first mass genocide of indigenous peoples. The Columbus legacy is steeped in blood, violence, and death. Public holidays celebrating Columbus not only teach children to honor a cruel and brutal man, they encourage people in this society to ignore, look away, and even support racist practices embedded in today's economic, political and judicial systems.
2. Question: Aren't these accounts of Columbus an exaggerated revision of history?
Answer: No. By conservative accounts based on Spanish surveys, the Taino numbered as many as 8 million in 1493. [Source: Cook and Woodrow, Essays in Population History, Vol. 1, Chapter VI, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971.
During Columbus' tenure as "viceroy and governor" of the Caribbean Islands and the American mainland from 1493 until 1500, he instituted policies of slavery (encomienda) and the systematic murder and rape of the Taino population. Dominican priest, Bartolome de Las Casas was the first European historian in the Americas. He was an eyewitness and wrote in painful detail of the tortures he witnessed. In a survey conducted in 1496, he estimated that over 5 million people had been exterminated within the first three years of the Columbus rule. [Actual survey conducted in 1496 by Bartolome de Las Casas, cited in J.B. Thatcher, Christopher Columbus, Vol. 2 [Source: New York: Putnam Sons Publishers, 1903-1904), p. 348ff Later accounts that gloss over the horrors of the Columbus regime are the revisions of history.
By the time of Columbus' departure, only 100,000 Taino were left, and by 1542, only 200 were left. Within the entire Caribbean Islands, about 15 million indigenous people are estimated to have been exterminated within one generation of Columbus' arrival. This is genocide, the wholesale killing of an entire race of people. These policies, established here, laid the foundation for extermination policies that Europeans used to justify the elimination of over 100 million native people throughout the Western Hemisphere. By any standards those numbers describe a Holocaust.
3. Question: Wasn't Columbus just a product of his times? Is it not unfair to judge a 15th Century man by 21st Century standards?
Answer: To view Columbus as violent and racist is not an imposition of 21st century morality. His own diaries reveal his brutality -- a brutality that offered no fair judgment to his victims. Bartolome de Las Casas began his days in the Americas as a beneficiary of the encomienda (slave-holding) system. However, as he watched the horror of human destruction caused as a result of Columbus' actions and decisions, as well as the actions of the soldiers under Columbus' command, De Las Casas repudiated the system. He described in vivid detail the massacre of the Indians, denounced Columbus, and published his findings in Europe in his History of the Indies.
The violence of Columbus' extermination actions was widely debated in theological and academic circles within Europe. European legal and moral principles tended to favor the rights of indigenous peoples to be free from unjustified invasion, murder and pillage by Europeans. Francisco de Vitoria, professor at the University of Salamanca in the early 1500s and often considered the father of modern international law, wrote extensively on the rights of indigenous peoples. Vitoria and others in Columbus' own lifetime rejected the view that popes and monarchs had the automatic right to enslave indigenous peoples and take their land. The rights of human beings were as much 15th Century issues then, as they are 21st Century issues today.
4. Question: But those events happened a long time ago. How could they possibly matter today?
Answer: Columbus' actions set the foundation for legal and social policies -- still used today in United States, Mexico, Canada, South America and in many countries around the world. These policies justify the theft and destruction of indigenous peoples' lands and knowledge by corporate and government interests. Media, films, judicial systems, educational systems, and other political and social institutions support this continued assault on the natural resources of indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples today remain at the margins of technological society -- struggling to overcome the destruction of land, culture and language. In many ways all peoples on this planet are impacted. These attacks on indigenous peoples and their land and their knowledge contribute to the destruction of ecosystems and the erosion of human rights for all people.
An excellent website on the movement to transform "Columbus Day" is http://www.transformcolumbusday.org/index.html where these questions and answers were originally published. It is primary focused on the Denver movement to transform Columbus Day, but their materials would provide useful resources for other locales.
In school I was taught the names۬Columbus, Cortez, and Pizzaro and۬A dozen other filthy murderers.۬A bloodline all the way to General Miles,۬Daniel Boone and general Eisenhower.
No one mentioned the names۬Of even a few of the victims.۬But don't you remember Chaske, whose spine۬Was crushed so quickly by Mr. Pizzaro's boot?۬What words did he cry into the dust?
What was the familiar name۬Of that young girl who danced so gracefully۬That everyone in the village sang with her--۬Before Cortez' sword hacked off her arms۬As she protested the burning of her sweetheart?
That young man's name was Many Deeds,۬And he had been a leader of a band of fighters۬Called the Redstick Hummingbirds, who slowed۬The march of Cortez' army with only a few۬Spears and stones which now lay still۬In the mountains and remember.
Greenrock Woman was the name۬Of that old lady who walked right up۬And spat in Columbus' face.۬We must remember that, and remember۬Laughing Otter the Taino who tried to stop۬Columbus and who was taken away as a slave.۬We never saw him again.
In school I learned of heroic discoveries۬Made by liars and crooks. The courage۬Of millions of sweet and true people۬Was not commemorated.
Let us then declare a holiday۬For ourselves, and make a parade that begins۬With Columbus' victims and continues۬Even to our grandchildren who will be named۬In their honor.
Because isn't it true that even the summer۬Grass here in this land whispers those names,۬And every creek has accepted the responsibility۬Of singing those names? And nothing can stop۬The wind from howling those names around۬The corners of the school.
Why else would the birds sing۬So much sweeter here than in other lands?
Another document from the movement of Native Americans and European American supporters to revisit the meaning of the Columbus Day celebration. Native peoples in both North and South America are increasingly regarding the second monday in October as a day to remember what might have been, and to remember the horror of five centuries of genocide. Unfortunately it focused only on the 1992 -500th Anniversary- but it is provides a model for study, reflection and local resolutions.
A Faithful Response
to the 500th Anniversary of the Arrival of Christopher Columbus
As adopted by the Governing Board
May 17, 1990
A Resolution of the
National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
As U.S. Christians approach public observances marking the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's first landing in the Western hemisphere, we are called to review our full history, reflect upon it, and act as people of faith mindful of the significance of 1492. The people in our churches and communities now look at the significance of the event in different ways. What represented newness of freedom, hope and opportunity for some was the occasion for oppression, degradation and genocide for others. For the Church this is not a time for celebration but a time for a committed plan of action insuring that this "kairos" moment in history not continue to cosmetically coat the painful aspects of the American history of racism.
1. In 1992, celebrations of the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the "New World" will be held. For the descendants of the survivors of the subsequent invasion, genocide, slavery, "ecocide", and exploitation of the wealth of the land, a celebration is not an appropriate observation of this anniversary.
* For the indigenous people of the Caribbean islands, Christopher Columbus's invasion marked the beginning of slavery and their eventual genocide.
* For the indigenous people of Central America, the result was slavery, genocide and exploitation leading to the present struggle for liberation.
* For the indigenous people of South America, the result was slavery, genocide, and the exploitation of their mineral and natural resources, fostering the early accumulation of capital by the European countries.
* For the indigenous people of Mexico, the result was slavery, genocide, rape of mineral as well as natural resources and a decline of their civilization.
* For the peoples of modern Puerto Rico, Hawaii and the Philippines the result was the eventual grabbing of the land, genocide and the present economic captivity.
* For the indigenous peoples of North America, it brought slavery, genocide, and theft and exploitation of the land which has led to their descendants' impoverished lives.
* For the peoples of the African Diaspora, the result was slavery, an evil and immoral system steeped in racism, economic exploitation, rape of mineral as well as human resources and national divisiveness along the lines of the colonizing nations.
* For the peoples from Asia brought to work the land, torn from their families and culture by false promises of economic prosperity, the result was labor camps, discrimination and today's victimization of the descendants facing anti-Asian racism.
* For the descendants of the European conquerors the subsequent legacy has been the perpetuation of paternalism and racism into our cultures and times.
2. The Church, with few exceptions, accompanied and legitimized this conquest and exploitation. Theological justifications for destroying native religious beliefs while forcing conversion to European forms of Christianity demanded a submission from the newly converted that facilitated their total conquest and exploitation.
3. Therefore, it is appropriate for the church to reflect on its role in that historical tragedy and, in pursuing a healing process, to move forward in our witness for justice and peace.
Towards that end, we are called to:
a. reflect seriously on the complexities and complicities of the missionary efforts during this period of colonization and subjugation that resulted in the destruction of cultures and religions, the desecration of religious sites, and other crimes against the spirituality of indigenous peoples;
b. review and reflect on the degree to which current missiologies tend to promote lifestyles that perpetuate the exploitation of the descendants of the indigenous people, and that stand in the way of enabling their self-determination;
c. identify and celebrate the significant voices within the church that have consistently advocated the rights and dignities of indigenous peoples;
d. recognize that what some historians have termed a "discovery" in reality was an invasion and colonization with legalized occupation, genocide, economic exploitation and a deep level of institutional racism and moral decadence;
e. reflect seriously on how the Church should and might ac- complish its task of witness and service to and with those of other faiths, recognizing their integrity as children of God, and not contributing to new bondages.
4. Therefore, the Governing Board of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA:
a. Declares 1992 to be a year of reflection and repentance, and calls upon its member communions to enter into theological and missional reflection, study and prayer as a faithful obser- vance of that year;
b. Commits itself to be involved in activities that bring forward the silenced interpretation of the 1492 event including:
* taking action to influence how governments or other institutions plan to celebrate the "discovery" of America;
* using its TV, radio and print media resources to educate the Church and its constituency about the factual histories of indigenous people, the colonization of their lands and the effects today of colonization, including the loss of land, lives and cultures; and
* advocating the inclusion of the accurate factual history of indigenous people, including African Americans, in textbooks to be used in public and parochial education systems in the United States; and
* cooperating with other hemispheric interfaith bodies in a gathering in the Caribbean islands to analyze the effects of the European invasion and colonization of the Americas from the perspective of their descendants;
c. Calls upon its member communions to join in affirming and implementing this resolution in dialogue with indigenous people of the Americas;
d. Requests that the Division of Church and Society (or its legal successor) in cooperation with the Division of Overseas Ministries (or its legal successor) develop programmatic materials for the speedy implementation of this resolution;
e. Requests appropriate units to explore convening a gathering of representatives of traditional tribes, urban Indian and tribal governments to discuss ways to strengthen Indian ministries;
f. Supports the endeavors of theological schools and seminaries to help open alternative understandings of 1492/1992;
g. Declares this resolution to be our humble and faithful first step contribution towards a deep understanding among peoples of our country. It is our hope that in a new spirit of reconciliation, we move forward together into a shared future as God's creatures honoring the plurality of our cultural heritage.
This document also quotes, in its footnotes, documents from other church bodies such as the Final Document of the European Ecumenical Assembly "Peace With Justice for the Whole Creation", May 1989, Basel, Switzerland, issued by the Conference of European Churches and the Council of European Bishops' Conference, June 2, 1989, which states that "1992 will moreover mark the 500th anniversary of the beginning of a period of European expansion to the detriment of other peoples." In the Basel document, European churchpersons acknowledge having "failed to challenge with sufficient consistency political and economic systems which misuse power and wealth, exploit resources for their self-interest and perpetuate poverty and marginalisation...We commit ourselves to struggle against all violations of human rights and the social structures which favor them."
Another footnote quotes "A Public Declaration to the Tribal Councils and Traditional Spiritual Leaders of the Indian and Eskimo Peoples of the Pacific Northwest", Bishop Thomas L. Blevins, Pacific Northwest Synod, Lutheran Church in America, and eight Bishops and leaders of other denominations, August, 1987. This statement speaks of "unconscious and insensitive" attitudes and actions by the church which reflect "the rampant racism and prejudice of the dominant culture with which we too willingly identified." The footnote also mentions a speech to the Indian Leaders of the Northwest Territories by Pope John Paul II in September 1987, in which the Pope assured the Native people that the Roman Catholic Church "extols the equal human dignity of all peoples and defends their right to uphold their own cultural character, with its distinct traditions and customs."
Finally, the U.S. Council of Churches document includes a biblio- graphy of materials which it recommends be used in education. Some of these entries may surprise you, especially if you've read any of them:
1. Bartolome de las Casas, "Historia de los indios (ca. 1550), "Tears of the Indians (ca. 1550), "In Defense of the Indians" (ca. 1550)
2. Deloria, Vine, Jr., "Custer Died For Your Sins", 1970; "God Is Red", 1983
3. Galeano, Eduardo, "Memory of Fire: Genesis", NY:Pantheon, 1985
4. Jackson, Helen Hunt, "A Century of Dishonor", 1881
5. Jennings, Francis, "The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism and the Cant of Conquest", Chapel Hill, 1975
6. Jordan, Winthrop, "White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro 1550-1812", Baltimore: Penguin, 1968
7. Limerick, Patricia Nelson, "The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West", New York: W.W. Norton, 1987
Clearly, it is no longer the "official" position of the Church to convert Native Americans. A quick look at the Vatican II Documents' "Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions" (1965) also plainly states that the Catholic Church supposedly now recognizes that there can be salvation outside the Church, and rejects the oppression of other religions as "foreign to the mind of Christ". Any missionary who says otherwise is guilty of ignorance at best and hypocrisy at worst; I offer the above documents in order to educate the former group! As for the latter, there's not much we can do for them other than point out that they can hardly call themselves Christians.
Monday is an important day for indigenous peoples of the Americas. It has become a day of remembering what could have been. It is a day of remembering the unfolding genocide. The genocide of indigenous peoples continues to this day.
But for too many of the inhabitants of North America, monday will be a day to celebrate Columbus and "his discovery." How do we judge history? An interesting academic question. But more importantly, how do we judge the present? I judge the present state of the nation based on how our people relate to our ancestors, and how our people relate to the future generations.
In preparation for this day of remembering, I print the following open letter. It was the opening document of a campaign that will continue until October the 12th is renamed and the people of the United States cease to live in denial of their history.
An Open Letter From the AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT of Colorado and Our Allies
When the Taino Indians saved Christopher Columbus from certain death on the fateful morning of October 12, 1492, a glorious opportunity presented itself for the cultures of both Europe and the Americas to flourish.
What occurred was neither glorious nor heroic. Just as Columbus could not, and did not, "discover" a hemisphere already inhabited by nearly 100 million people, his arrival cannot, and will not, be recognized by indigenous peoples as a heroic and festive event.
From a Native perspective, Columbus' arrival was a disaster from the beginning. Although his own diaries reveal that he was greeted by the Tainos with the most generous hospitality he had ever known, he immediately began the enslavement and slaughter of the Indian peoples of the Caribbean.
Defenders of Columbus and his holiday argue that critics unfairly judge Columbus, a 15th Century product, by the moral and legal standards of the late 20th century. Such a defense implies that there were no legal or moral constraints on actions such as Columbus' in 1492. In reality, European legal and moral principles acknowledged the natural rights of Indians and prohibited their slaughter or unjust wars against them.
The issue of Columbus and Columbus Day is not easily resolvable by dismissing Columbus, the man. Columbus Day is a perpetuation of racist assumptions that the Americas were a wasteland cluttered with dark skin savages awaiting the blessings of European "civilization." Throughout this hemisphere, educational systems and the popular media perpetuate the myth that indigenous peoples have contributed nothing to the world, and, consequently, we should be grateful for our colonization, our dispossession, and our microwave ovens.
The racist Columbus legacy enables every country in this hemisphere, including the United States, to continue its destruction of Indian peoples, from the jungles of Brazil to the highlands of Guatemala, from the Chaco of Paraguay to the Western Shoshone Nation in Nevada. Indian people remain in a perpetual state of danger from the system begun by Columbus in 1492. The Columbus legacy throughout the Americas keeps Indian people at the bottom of every socio-economic indicator. We are under continuing physical, legal and political attack, and are afforded the least access to political and legal remedies. Nevertheless we continue to resist and we refuse to surrender our spirituality, to assimilate, or to disappear into Hollywood's romantic sunset.
To dignify Columbus and his legacy with parades, holidays and other celebrations is repugnant. As the original peoples of this land, we cannot, and we 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 the past five years the American Indian Movement of Colorado and our allies have been compelled to confront and resist the continuing Columbus legacy in the streets of Denver. For every hour spent organizing non-violent opposition to the Columbus parade, we have lost an hour that we were not able to use in assisting indigenous treaty rights struggles, land recovery strategies, and the advancement of indigenous self-determination.
However, one positive benefit of our efforts was the public debate over Columbus Day that has spread into the public schools as an educational tool for students and their teachers. Overall, we view the demise of the Columbus Day Parade in Denver as a welcome opportunity to move beyond the divisive symbolism of the past.
We therefore suggest the replacement of Columbus Day with a celebration that is more inclusive and that more accurately reflects the cultural and racial richness of the Americas. We also suggest that the community support a more honest portrayal of social evolution in this hemisphere and a greater respect for all people on the margins of the dominating society. There is no more appropriate place for this transformation to occur than in Colorado, the birthplace of the Columbus Day holiday.
[The following appeared on a full page of the Rocky Mountain News on Saturday, October 8, 1994.]
In school I was taught the names۬Columbus, Cortez, and Pizzaro and۬A dozen other filthy murderers.۬A bloodline all the way to General Miles,۬Daniel Boone and general Eisenhower.
No one mentioned the names۬Of even a few of the victims.۬But don't you remember Chaske, whose spine۬Was crushed so quickly by Mr. Pizzaro's boot?۬What words did he cry into the dust?
What was the familiar name۬Of that young girl who danced so gracefully۬That everyone in the village sang with her--۬Before Cortez' sword hacked off her arms۬As she protested the burning of her sweetheart?
That young man's name was Many Deeds,۬And he had been a leader of a band of fighters۬Called the Redstick Hummingbirds, who slowed۬The march of Cortez' army with only a few۬Spears and stones which now lay still۬In the mountains and remember.
Greenrock Woman was the name۬Of that old lady who walked right up۬And spat in Columbus' face.۬We must remember that, and remember۬Laughing Otter the Taino who tried to stop۬Columbus and who was taken away as a slave.۬We never saw him again.
In school I learned of heroic discoveries۬Made by liars and crooks. The courage۬Of millions of sweet and true people۬Was not commemorated.
Let us then declare a holiday۬For ourselves, and make a parade that begins۬With Columbus' victims and continues۬Even to our grandchildren who will be named۬In their honor.
Because isn't it true that even the summer۬Grass here in this land whispers those names,۬And every creek has accepted the responsibility۬Of singing those names? And nothing can stop۬The wind from howling those names around۬The corners of the school.
Why else would the birds sing۬So much sweeter here than in other lands?
My partner and spouse and I live near Tampa, Florida where she serves a Unitarian Universalist church, I serve the Treasure Coast Unitarian Universalist Church on the Atlantic Coast of Florida about 160 miles away. We travel back and forth taking on days off. My residence near Stuart is a community called Indiantown. Photos from the collection of the Canadian Museum of History. I was inspired to post this morning by a new blog (see below.)
Indiantown had a large Seminole Population at one time, but at present most of the people who live in Indiantown are Mayans who work in Florida as farmworkers and grounds keepers for institutions, country clubs, and more affluent residents.
I have been to celebrations of the Maya, different from the Cherokee. But of the same indigenous spirit.
A new blog by Hafidha Sofia posts a reflection on the Maya. Congratulations and good luck to Hafidha on her new blog
