Today I was at our local coffee shop chatting w/
friends, when the subject of Columbus Day came up, since today is the national
celebration of CC’s supposed “discovery” of America. We were lamenting the realities of who this “discoverer”
really was as a man, as a conqueror backed by the Spanish, Roman-Catholic,
monarchy, while we recalled how the narrative we were taught about “Columbus
Day” in school grossly romanticized (and still does) what Columbus accomplished
in his pursuit of a trade route to India.
As Richard Kavesh points out on the Native American
Times
Web site, both Columbus and the Spanish royal court were all about the money,
in addition to “Christianizing” the world in the Roman Catholic faith: Columbus and his backers in Spain were motivated by what historians
refer to as “God, gold, and glory."
Columbus and his crew, as apparent representatives of Jesus and “The” Church, forced the native peoples in this new land to collect gold for Columbus and Spain, and for their trouble they faced murder, torture, and new diseases. When Columbus succeeded in killing the natives, he shipped in African slaves to continue the work for himself and the Spanish crown. As Kavesh puts it, Columbus was therefore directly responsible for introducing both imperialism and slavery to the Americas.
The standard narrative is still, in the 21st century, “in fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue…”—benign at worst, heroic adventure at best, but either way unacceptably one-dimensional. As we continued to chat, we lamented an American education in which the Columbus narrative is only one of many narratives about who we are and where we came from as a nation that are regularly taught to children without question.
Columbus and his crew, as apparent representatives of Jesus and “The” Church, forced the native peoples in this new land to collect gold for Columbus and Spain, and for their trouble they faced murder, torture, and new diseases. When Columbus succeeded in killing the natives, he shipped in African slaves to continue the work for himself and the Spanish crown. As Kavesh puts it, Columbus was therefore directly responsible for introducing both imperialism and slavery to the Americas.
The standard narrative is still, in the 21st century, “in fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue…”—benign at worst, heroic adventure at best, but either way unacceptably one-dimensional. As we continued to chat, we lamented an American education in which the Columbus narrative is only one of many narratives about who we are and where we came from as a nation that are regularly taught to children without question.
Yet questioning those narratives is essential for
peace. The narratives of American
history—from Columbus to the Mayflower landing at Plymouth, to Westward
expansion, to the Japanese internment, to the Vietnam War, to our invasion of
Iraq—are replete with violence, murder, torture, thievery, domination, and
destruction. Always, of course, in the
name of democracy, national security, “national interests,” humanity, and peace. If we’re honest, our national interests
really haven’t changed much since Columbus: God, gold, and glory.
We must be honest about who we have been. We successors of those who came before us
swim in a long-standing national ethical soup in which one of the dominant
flavors is brutal violence. We have to
own up to our history, to change our narratives, in order to begin the ongoing
and difficult work of transforming our national ethic and identity. We can never achieve real peace, and be true
agents of peace in an increasingly global society, without an honest education.
True knowledge is power, but not the power of violence,
domination, or destruction. It’s a
foundational power of peaceful coexistence.
In 1947, Martin Luther King reflected on the role of education in
society, concluding with a dire warning:
Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many
instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the
morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education.
Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from
the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction…. The function of
education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think
critically.
But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest
menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with
reason, but with no morals…. If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of
close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral
acts. Be careful, "brethren!" Be careful, teachers!
We all must be careful. We must be deliberate in what we teach, in
what we learn, in what we pass on to others, in how we teach future generations
to think about their past as members of a diverse nation with a checkered past.
Columbus Day, along with Thanksgiving, Veterans Day, Martin Luther King Day, Independence Day are all exquisite teachable moments if we use them well, if we challenge our sanitized and simplistic national tales, if we challenge our heroic narratives, if we examine our national ethos and grow in the process. And it’s not just our children who need to exploit these teachable moments to the fullest…we all do. Not just as a nation, but as individuals integrally connected with each other, with all species, with nature, with our past and our future.
Columbus Day, along with Thanksgiving, Veterans Day, Martin Luther King Day, Independence Day are all exquisite teachable moments if we use them well, if we challenge our sanitized and simplistic national tales, if we challenge our heroic narratives, if we examine our national ethos and grow in the process. And it’s not just our children who need to exploit these teachable moments to the fullest…we all do. Not just as a nation, but as individuals integrally connected with each other, with all species, with nature, with our past and our future.
