Squeezing into the tight schedule of a working Mom a quick stop at USPS to get a quite urgent package on its way to Europe – in between picking up my youngest and hastening to his swimming lessons – I was quite annoyed when standing in front of closed doors: Columbus Day!
Not that I don’t grudge them their day off, but that was just the last straw – I could take no more of this ill-named to say the least, National Holiday that at its very core is aimed at silencing the indigenous voice: With my 2nd grader coming home from school with a self-drawn picture of Columbus – that he intended to pin to his wall to his Mom’s horror – and my Kindergartener asking questions whether Indians still ‘lived in teepees’, I knew it was time to take drastic action. So, I grabbed my copy of Rethinking Columbus, and read to them Tina Thomas’ “The Untold Story”. Oh for sure, it was a harsh fall for them to the bottom of reality (‘Columbus was just SO MEAN’) but I got the reaction that I wanted: I had them thinking of the underlying ambitions (gold, gold, and gold) as well as the consequences (oppression, murder, enslavement) of that oh so brave venture-voyage, and induced them to take the perspective of the people WHO WERE THERE BEFORE, in the so-called ‘New’ World.
I know I will have succeeded when they don’t put up with the glorifying, cliché-prone version of Columbus Day in school, and start thinking and talking in class about the Other voices, peoples, that still today, continue to be silenced.
Happy Native American Day!
Sources:
Tina Thomas, 1998. “The Untold Story”. Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, eds. Bill Bigelow & Bob Peterson. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
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It might have been hard for the kids to learn the truth... but that IS our responsibility... they have to grow up as little people who see through the masquerade...
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