Sunday, October 13, 2019

Observing Columbus Day


Observing Columbus Day

Written by Dan McDonald

            Columbus Day is now controversial in America. Some think it remains an important part of the story of our nation, while others wish for a name change to “Indigenous People’s Day.” I am not sure how much wisdom I can shed on the subject, but will try to express myself while hoping the best for our shared future.

            I think our memories of Columbus should be complex enough to view his celebrated place in our history as controversial. On the positive side, he was a man of conviction willing take on a risk filled venture to prove that the world was round, and one could reach the Far East by traveling west from the Western lands of the European continent. He was brave enough to risk his life for his convictions. The academic world of the day probably generally believed in a round earth, but there was some doubt upon the matter. So for being a man willing to test his convictions with a daring expedition, give Columbus that much credit.

            The truth about Christopher Columbus is much more complex. He proved to be a man, who yearned for extravagant titles and extreme authority over the inhabitants of the lands he discovered. The same Spanish government which conducted the Inquisition came to regard Columbus to be a corrupt and excessively brutal governor over the areas where he had been allowed to become a governor. He remarked in his discoveries of the people living on the Caribbean islands that they would make good servants or slaves because of their friendliness to Columbus and his crew. Is this the sort of person we wish to describe as a hero, one who finds the friendliness of a people a good trait as they will be easier to subject to servants or slavery?

            Columbus was undoubtedly a man of his times. His Europe was emerging from its simpler times with a sense of an emerging culture that was mandated for an exceptional work in human history. There was a sense that their advances in science, and their embrace of Christianity made it proper to believe that their place in the world was unique and they were meant to govern that world. The reality is that what Columbus represented would be represented with more or less nuance by many among the Europeans reaching the newly discovered hemisphere.

            It should be noted that history is full of horrendous results from the boundaries of differing cultures. In our world Kashmir can be a violent place where Islam and Hinduism meet. Relationships between Christians and Muslims between Islam in North Africa and Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa can be brutal. Recent events show the likelihood of brutality to be set off along the borderlines of Kurd, Turk, Syrian, and Christian in Syria. When I was younger the boundary lines between Communist and Capitalist led to wars in East Asia, parts of Africa, and Latin America. We might think nothing in history had ever taken place like the conflict between Europeans and the Indigenous peoples. But unfortunately this is a horribly recurring theme in human history.

            The reality is that no one wishing for good simply wants to let the bad events of our history to move forward unchanged. We know that the Indigenous people were suppressed into servitude in their own hemisphere. We know that as white Americans filled the continent in the United States, the territories of the indigenous people were reduced and forced to be lived out on small and generally inferior lands and soils. We know that in addition to the suppression of the Indigenous people, there were vast numbers of Africans brought via the Atlantic Passage to slavery and numerous instances of degradation. The history of the Americas is like that of what a Puritan once said of family trees. A family tree can be a glorious thing if enough branches are cut off when one is boasting of his family. Our national accomplishments occurred alongside shameful acts, as is true among all the nations and families of human history.

            My hope on this Columbus Day is to see the need for an extension of the hope our Constitution’s preamble expresses. It was a hope, in its writing pretty much limited to the Europeans who had come to the Americas. The hope was for a more perfect union. That is the hope we should now yearn to be increasingly realized for the numerous men and women who were here when the Europeans came to the Americas, or for all the varied cultures of the varied places from which the varied people of the Americas came. Our goal should be the flourishing of all men and women in our lands of North and South America. We should find it deeply disappointing if one group of our peoples flounder rather than flourish. We can recognize that many things were gotten wrong since Columbus came. But the reality is that Columbus came and now whatever blood line flows through our veins we need to yearn to see all men and women flourish who are the descendants of these varied tribes, nations, and tongues that have come to call the Americas home.