A Proposal: Change Columbus Day to First Americans Day

[cali]

a day to honor those peoples and cultures who lived and flourished here long before any European set foot on these shores.

Honor and remember the grave injustices done to those people. Raise awareness of current injustices against them.

Sounds a little unlikely but that what I'd like to see.

[jberryhill]

1. Columbus Day isn't so much about Columbus

It more or less became a *thing* in reaction to attitudes toward Italian immigrants in the late 1800's and early 1900's, and seems to be their way of saying "we belong here too".

[Laelth]

2. I fully support this proposal.

It's the right thing to do. We can never undo genocide, but we should honor the victims of genocide rather than its greatest pioneer.

-Laelth

[randome]

3. Rename Africa to Australopithecus Land?

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Treat your body like a machine. Your mind like a castle.[/center][/font][hr]

[Bluenorthwest]

4. In South Dakota it is known as Native Americans Day

nt

[The Straight Story]

5. I feel the same way about Palestine (and many other countries)

The natives there were also kicked to the curb - and guess who had a hand in it? The US and Britain. No shocker there.

Seems like the whole "Get off your land so I can live there" is a historic theme (which pretty much goes to each country/culture at some point in time) that has played out every century since I don't know when.

And it is still going on today.


And as far as injustices - we should all pay more attention to news coming from Indians here in the US (they have a few online papers, twitter accounts, etc) - cause the mainstream won't cover it.

[cali]

6. I guess I'm unclear as to what you're saying

both Jews and others are native to that region. Certainly, Israel has no business on the WB or in or controlling Gaza, but the situation there isn't analogous to what happened here.

[The Straight Story]

7. What is analogous is:

We still see what happened here going on today as it always has.

The land of Palestine has had people on it for over 10,000 years, Israel proper for only a short blip on that radar. There was a concerted effort by people in power to kick out the people and continue expanding the land:

Plan Dalet, which was immediately sent out to military commanders in the field. According
to Pappe, the army was to forcibly evict Palestinians from
their homes and land using various prescribed strategies: ‘large-scale
intimidation; laying siege to and bombarding population centres;
setting fire to homes, properties and goods; expulsion; demolition;
and finally planting mines among the rubble to prevent any of the
expelled inhabitants from returning.’

The historian Michael R. Fischbach reports that a UN committee
set up to evaluate Palestinian losses produced a very conservative
estimate in the mid-1960s that Israel had confiscated at least 1.75
million acres of land (or seven million dunams, in the traditional
unit of measurement used by the Ottomans)63 – about a third of
Israel’s total territory.64 This land was valued at close to $1 billion
in the prices of the day and would be worth many hundreds of billions
more today.65 If confiscated Palestinian moveable property such
as bank accounts, jewellery, artworks, safe deposit boxes, bonds, as
well vehicles, furniture, agricultural equipment and herds of animals
was included, the total was pushed far higher.

First, the remains of several hundred Palestinian villages dotted
the countryside, not only an embarrassing reminder of the native
population that had recently been expelled but also a testament to
the war crimes that had been committed during the ethnic cleansing
campaign. Furthermore, there was a general fear among the leadership
that, should the villages remain standing, Palestinian refugees
might successfully lobby the international community for their right
to return.69 Israel therefore invested much energy after the war in
the mammoth task of erasing the villages. A significant number of
the more impressive homes in cities like Jerusalem, Haifa, Lydd and
Ramla were used to house Jewish officials or new immigrants,70 but
most rural communities were destroyed by the army, which either
dynamited them or bombed them from the air.71 Maps were changed
too.

(from the book Disappearing Palestine)

Israel was not content with the land it had been given and has continually sought to expand it, much as we did here, at the expense of those who had actually been living there for hundreds of years already. They are still seeking to expand and confine the 'original' inhabitants (folks who had been living there).

I don't hate Americans today for what happened in the past to the Indians, wouldn't accomplish anything. But, like others, we can learn from history and call out such things when we see them. And we are seeing the US and other countries perpetuating this type of behavior even now.

That we ignore it, make excuses for it, etc, tells me that we are not any better than our fellow countrymen in days of yore who went along with it as well, I am sure they had their 'good reasons'. We haven't learned from history, we just found a way to make ourselves sound more progressive than they were and feel better about ourselves. Instead of bringing slaves in today, we find ways to repackage it : hire kids to make our shoes in terrible working conditions in other countries, call it capitalism and competition. We don't invade other countries and take them over, we defend ourselves and save others. We don't deny people rights, we fight terrorism.