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I've seen several screeds demanding we end Columbus Day and celebrate indigenous people's day.
The thing is, not even the indigenous people in America are indigenous to America if you go back far enough.
The "indigenous" people displaced by European settlers were merely the most recent residents of the area, not the first settlers from the Siberian land-bridge migrations out of Asia.
How long do you have to live someplace before you're indigenous?
The Sioux didn't live in the Black Hills during the written history of the place, yet they're considered indigenous and not the tribes they themselves displaced.
How long is long enough?
Me, I consider myself to be a native of this land. Indigenous.
I didn't move here from another nation.
My father didn't. My mother didn't.
My father's father and mother didn't.
My mother's mother didn't. My mother's father came here from Italy.
We were born here and are as native as someone who traces their ancestors to pre-historic and pre-columbian times.
Columbus Day could be gotten rid of as a federal holiday easily enough, since it's so unpopular with much of the country. Trump could drop Columbus Day and add Juneteenth as a popular substitute.
ReplyDeleteBorn in Holyoke, MA U.S.A. (which makes me what is known as a Masshole). Can't say I am any less indigenous than the Nipmuc Indians or the Paleoindians before them. Prior to people the area was under a 2 mile thick ice sheet.
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