[Applause] Columbus is not someone that we should celebrate because he's spread oppression and he spread genocide throughout the indigenous people who inhabited the man for this land was not barren this land belonged to a group of people and it's wrong to celebrate someone who tried to annihilate those people it's unfortunate but people look at what's politically correct and what seems good in in today's world and need are not mindful of the big picture think of the other iconic American heroes that we celebrate and everybody uses the example you know Washington owned slaves and Lincoln was not necessarily the great Emancipator outside of the circumstances of is I mean these are all real issues but we don't tear them down we we engage them and we're running the risk of tearing down something that says a lot about the the core values of our country if we're not going to teach the truth about some of us then I don't think we should about Columbus at all let's teach math you know let's teach chemistry let's teach something else it's all well and good to say well the kids were stupid at least don't know they're stupid at least they all know that they never had a course [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] one of the first things I do with my students is I come into class and I say I want everybody to watch very carefully and that I go up to a girl and I've arranged it with her beforehand but nobody else knows that and I scoop up her purse off her desk and I say this is my purse kids look at me like no no it's not oh yeah it is and I can prove it to you and then I open it oh my god kids are really outraged that I wouldn't pry into I say what's your problem is this my purse this is my brush this is my I'll say okay if you don't think it is then prove it to me why why is this not mine we saw you take it that's Nicky stuff in there if you know we can give you a test you would know what's in there as well as Nicky would know I say okay okay okay let's say I discovered Nicky's a purse now it's mine isn't it wait a second just because you you college something different doesn't mean that that's your purse now no I see well what else could we call it when went out what what else tonight well you stole Nicky's purse you ripped it off you you know you jacked her purse or all these things and and so we began looking at language and you know what is it called when when somebody goes into somebody else's land militarily well it's an invasion so okay so instead of saying that Columbus discovered America we could say he invaded America we could say all these things that you said about the purse that that I ripped it off that I jacked that we could say all those kind of things - and so who whose perspective are we taking when we call it a discovery well it's a perspective of the so called discovers what did this person do actually when he arrived and why do we have a holiday named after that's the good stuff of history because again that's the critique that's where we get into the realm of interpretation how we judge somebody in retrospect to me a mythical hero is somebody that is above critique somebody who is essentially a deity somebody who cannot and should not be questioned because their God and I think that becomes hugely problematic obviously history is littered with all kinds of heroes and villains but they were all human beings none of them were deities and none of them or should be above critique he's a cultural icon a Messenger of Christ a genocide will conquer earth and a patriotic hero he's a parade he's a protest he's an opportunity to get that dining room set you've wanted for 15% off he never stepped foot in any of our 50 United States a nation that when he died was still 270 years away from being formed but take a look around he's everywhere in a land he never knew existed yet in places where he did land he hasn't exactly been popular Christopher Columbus is responsible for one of the most monumental events in all of human history for a person so prevalent in our society so ingrained in our national heritage why do so many of us learn hardly anything at all in school beyond a rhyme and the names of his three ships really to tell the true history of the United States of America you have to start with the indigenous people and you have to tell the story of what happened to us and how it happened to us and why and it didn't just start with Christopher Columbus that's only one aspect of the atrocities that happened and so that's the beginning though if you're gonna start it with a rhyme and it's great and it's wonderful then you're already starting off with a lie every year the second Monday in October is more than just a day or a name on the calendar it's a microcosm of the continuing clash between the old world and the new imperialism colonialism patriotism racism religion greed human rights environmentalism and education all take center stage around one of the most useful and enduring symbols in American history a sailor from 15th century Genoa [Music] remember that that Europe particularly Spain was coming out of an eight hundred year war and a lot of their natural resources and economic resources were depleted which is when Columbus left that same day they were expelling Jews and the less the Muslims out from from those Spanish areas and taking over their businesses right and to get the money back into the the coffers of the leaders of that so Columbus was really you know that that voyage was really about that building some kind of economic pipeline that would send resources and help build up the Spanish Empire which it did there was among the Christian population of the Spain there was this enthusiast and thinking that the Christians finally would be able to even reconquer Jerusalem the fact that Jerusalem was still under the rule of the Muslims of the Ottomans to be precise was a real like a stone on the site of European Christians and that's probably one of the reasons why the Spanish monarchs especially Queen Isabella were willing to support Columbus's undertaking even though many experts a de Castilian court thought that Columbus's project was kind of ill-advised and that Columbus didn't really know what he was talking about growing up we learned about his triumphant landing after his first voyage at sea it's a story about courage and perseverance but his other three voyages are treated as footnotes into what happened on land gets even less attention the first building that Columbus built on Espanola was a fort now this is symbolic to me of the culture that Columbus was spring here they didn't build a church well you know with my own students now if if if I ask them you know who discovered America who do they say discovered America you know everybody you know Columbus and in fact a lot of kids will even start you know in 1492 I know and so they all know that that little ditty together of course if I asked them well who was here who was here who did he encounter when he came who did he discover and kids will say well the Indians I'll say well well ok but what particular nationality what what name can you name any of the people who are here no none and I said well you know what is what does that tell us what does that tell us that everybody knows the name of Columbus but nobody knows the names of the people who were here [Applause] [Applause] Taino culture was was really based on need not greed for many centuries the Taino people lived throughout the Caribbean islands they were a peaceful and deeply spiritual people who felt blessed by a female creator everything they were thankful for was strongly connected to the reciprocity of nature communities throughout the islands lived in good health sustainably harvesting both the land and the sea they had no need for armies or police they would settle differences not by going to battle but by playing a game nothing like the wars or diseases that were busy ravaging Europe existed here they loved getting together to create art have feasts and play music the Tainos were remarkably friendly and generous and they always seemed to be smiling the word Taino meant good people and by all accounts they were he even said himself in his journals they're the most peaceful loving people and they would give you anything and they had no no animosity they had no reason for war if you look at his his diaries he right away he is looking at the people and at the resources and really tabulating economically how much all of these folks would be worth and he says right on in the beginning with 50 men i can subjugate these people and they could be you know great service so that that's a clear intent of what of what his he had in mind he's just monitoring everything right in the beginning he had to pay back Spain for the further for the boats and the men and the supplies so there's a clear commodification of resources happening not only the natural resources but of the human resources he used the doctrine of discovery being able to claim lands for your crown and claim them for another country because the people were less than and 14:55 the Pope ordered the King of Portugal Portugal to go out into the world and to vanquish all people of color to capture all their possessions to take all of their lands this edict by the Pope came to be known as the doctrine of discovery it is this order by the Pope that caused Columbus to come and to destroy to destroy our peoples the way they viewed the native peoples the Taino people in those early interactions was just you know the epitome of racism right racism meaning the dictionary definition meaning that they saw themselves as superior if you have this this doctrine of discovery both in a symbolic sense but also in like the historical and literal sense that justifies the actions that you take like against the people who were already there and then also justifies the silences that you create right so that justifies you not talking about them you not acknowledging them because how can people be on a land if you discovered it if you're the first person to find it right that's not possible in the course of their hunt for gold the Spanish let no atrocity test it he comes back to Haiti with 17 ships with between 1,000 and 2,000 soldiers with attack dogs with armored forces and with cannons they read out with speech before they got into a towns these were people under his watch speech says and sometimes the people could be sleeping they didn't understand Spanish they could just read this out and say you know we are now you're now under the control of Spain and if you try to fight against me you will wipe you out the condition was clear they they said it he's the first confused to door if you will and in fact he invented many of the really bad habits by which conquistadors have been notoriously known ever since [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the rapes and the murders and the selling little girls into prostitution I mean that's common knowledge studying us trying to bring out some kind of revisionist history that's documented from his own journals right he sent his people out to find all the gold that he knew who was there and when they couldn't find it if they were to enslave or kill the Taino people that was all right by him what he wanted to do is make sure that they were hunting for gold she enslaved people here in the Western Hemisphere and sent them back to the eastern hemisphere in Chains about 5,000 in all through the current Canary Island Center Spain it's the reason why the great historian of Africa basil Davidson calls Christopher Columbus the father of the slave trade they would use some folks if they if they got mad at them or if it was just you know a bad day for them they would use folks for target practice or just to see how sharp their swords were one of the things that gets left out is the horrific nature of the tribute system that that Columbus initiated where people's hands were chopped off if they didn't deliver these little Hawks bells of gold every three months they engaged it in all manner of sexual exploitation not only of women but we're talking about children and these are accounts by their own people this is not something that though we make up many people in various title communities just outright committed suicide mass suicides because of this hell on earth that they were living when they were making examples of folks remember these these were guys who really fine-tuned the Inquisition right like that that attacks against anybody who was non-christian right the burning of heretics etc so what they would do to the Tainos is that to make examples of him they would hang them thirteen at a time that would emulate the Apostles and Christ and so Twelve Apostles in Christ that's how they would say they were making this sacrifice or her however they would term this this this horrific act as something that was supposed to be exalting Christianity he saw himself as crystal Ference that is to say Christopher the Christ bearer and that he was he was he was bringing Christ Christianity to the heathen people of this world that he had discovered is anything that they did at that time something Jesus would I don't think so [Music] [Music] [Music] their whole system in Europe was based on the exploitation of the resources a match in the head natural resources in the new world slave labor right all these things help build up Europe to the power that is not look Europe today the European European monetary is higher than us bacteria right that system started right there was a result of all of that exploitation after the Caribbean that the English did it that the French did it they just followed that same suit that same pattern all of that stems from that period Columbus was the chief architect of that [Music] you [Music] [Music] my dad came to this country as a teenager with his family and they were successful because they worked hard they had integrity they believed in family they believed in God and they believed in the country they came to we were community of people that relied foremost on family in church for their social structure not on a civic society it was not something that we had a tradition of in southern Italy and that was I think suspect perhaps we were seen as a community that didn't want to assimilate and was sort of maintaining its its own structures and values and it was just simple things we're very so very different you know our Catholicism our our ethnic makeup our look we were clearly Outsiders the Italians who came over in the 19th century and who were in many cases shunned aside by much of white American society the Italians clung to Columbus as an Italian they thought that would be a way for them to establish themselves as a cultured heroic people from the old world it was in the minds of most white Protestants a white Protestant nation not everyone here was a white Pras and that's for sure but in their minds why Protestants were the true and just rulers of the land I certainly don't think Italian Americans came with this vision of Columbus as a hero Columbus is a figure that was really almost more of an American narrative and American mythology than one that came with our people in their mass migration [Music] the American society American polity has used Columbus since since we were a nation in fact as the symbol of America as if as if Columbus had ever gotten to the United States as if Columbus knew anything at all about North America other than the the islands we just kind of grabbed him here was a man who bravely sailed across the Atlantic to an unknown land forged onward through hostile conditions and tamed savage heathen Indians who needed European salvation he triumphed because of his faith in God only in the end to be unappreciated by his monarchy reduced to that simple narrative Columbus was practically John Adams in the early republic one of the ways that you celebrated Columbus was by completely obliterating his Catholicism and his italian as' right just making him a kind of free-floating signifiers we would say just some white guy who came here first claimed this for us they certainly weren't going to take to come so crazy the horse or somebody like that as a national hero they could contrive Columbus to be a a heroic figure because they didn't know very much about him nobody else was resurrecting him you might have thought that Spain would claim him as a hero or perhaps even Italy people in those days thought it was amazing if you took a word and made it sound Latin it immediately gave something a sense of grandiosity and elegance in the lead-up to the Revolution the American colonies wanted to identify themselves as something different something independent even the word America was to British Columbus became Columbia the poetic nickname of colonial America and long before France gave us this one Columbia was our first female symbol of Liberty hail Columbia was one of our earliest unofficial national anthems and played proudly as George Washington galloped to his first inauguration at that same time a Capitol was being built which was to be called Washington District of Columbia and Columbia became the symbol of the United States from from then on now that Columbus was one of them patriotic Protestants wanted to commemorate the 300th anniversary of his discovery of their land the Tammany society or Columbian order in New York notoriously known today as Tammany Hall made headlines for their celebrations Boston another city of influential Protestants soon followed and in Baltimore 1500 miles away from where he landed the oldest columbus monument in the entire world was built in his honor before long authors and poets started rediscovering the man who originally inspired Columbia but as he was reshaped back into the human form of Christopher Columbus he retained a mythical essence the future legacy of Columbus in America was put into motion as manifest destiny shaped the American spirit of westward expansion this founding father of a new world went along for the ride [Music] [Music] you [Music] white settlers euro-americans felt themselves to be on the high sort of in a higher order of of the human race Andrew Jackson made a career of subjugating Native Americans as a militia leader u.s. general and ultimately as a very popular president the war in 1814 the war of 1812 he takes an increasingly hostile attitude toward native rights and the existence of Native Nations and his treaties with the creeks and other tribes in the south after after the war of 1812 were very very punitive I mean we're talking about taking away thousands and thousands of acres of tribal land and he's even even acts in a hostile way with with tribes that had fought alongside him during the War of 1812 or the Choctaws for example he is the person I think that takes Jefferson's idea of taking native land and and and making sure that that native people are not in contact with with American settlers he's the one who really is ultimately the architect of of Indian Removal he thinks that native people are going to become extinct because the conflict between civilized Americans and savages the savage native people is going to devolve to the always devolve to the interests of superior white people it was the age of the common man and by the end of Jackson's two terms as president Indian Removal slavery and the exploitation of nature in the United States had flourished as a joint-venture and the common man loved Christopher Columbus Washington Irving was a successful fiction writer best known as the author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle in 1826 he was offered a chance to write a biography of Columbus based on new documents uncovered in Spain it was extremely successful and it was extremely fiction his fiction would be taught as fact for generations including one especially erroneous detail that lingers on to this day a person wrote to the local paper just the other week saying that we can't trust scientists because they didn't know that the earth was round and Columbus had to prove it to them this whole Flat Earth myth kind of converts him into a man of science if you think about it I mean he proved it nobody else knew it the Greeks knew it people you know when you see an eclipse of the moon the earth casts around shadow on the moon of all the distortions about Columbus probably the most elemental one is this guy was like this Tribune and modernity and everyone wants him to be that right the pro Columbus people through he ushered in modernity and the anti Columbus people do too because they think that parts of modernity were a disaster right but it turns out that in many ways he wasn't he was much closer to a medievalist you know he just had all these pre Enlightenment ideas about the nature of knowledge and the nature of humanity which is what you would kind of expect if you looked at the timeline our Capitol building was getting an upgraded dome the new plans for renovation called for him to be just about everywhere as a distinguished symbol of our national character this giant sculpture of him holding the world in his hand beside a cowering indigenous woman stood next to many presidential inaugurations until the 1950s the massive bronze doors that are the entrance of the Capitol all him from top to bottom in the rotunda we're 11 presidents have lain in state the painting of his first landfall isn't far from John Trumbull's Declaration of Independence and right next to that his Ronald Reagan his face is one of the handful of stone reliefs on the Rotunda wall entire up he can be seen again landing in the New World as part of the 360 degree narrative of our nation he's in the president's room as part of a ceiling fresco and in the Senate chamber you can see this as his legend grew so did his place in American history by the mid 19th century he could be found on the first page of chapter 1 in children's history books the first name many children would see and identify with the United States we landed one evening said to me are you the party of lumber men that once agreed to go and spend a winter pleasantly on collies run I oh oh yes we'll go to college run to that we will love greed provided you pay good wages our passage to and fro then we'll agree to accompany you to college run my own then we'll love B to accompany you to gold rushes and other forms of exploiting nature continued to accompany Indian Removal more land was seized in parcel to railroad companies which fueled the explosion of America's industrial economy I think we forget how violent the American labor movement was you know I mean during those years the US Army was called that over a hundred times to crush labor action and that was the environment that that Columbus Day came from and it's it's it's the Catholic working class finding a Columbus that will be a kind of lion for them in New Haven Connecticut father Michael megive nice all families in his parish being struck by workplace tragedy societies that already existed which provided safety nets for their communities were mostly Protestant you know it's funny because in the 20th century obviously communism of the big international threat and we forget that there was another international threat in the 19th century which was in some ways much scarier to Americans which was the Catholic Church because the Catholic Church like communism is an explicitly international organization please be clear I'm not saying it's communist right and many of those people would be appalled to that idea right but it was and remains an international organization and therefore it raises the specter of divided loyalties what are you really right and who do you listen to who are you beholden to are you really one of us right or do you actually respect the rule of this foreign power right it isn't us and in Baltimore there was a huge rumor that went through town that the Pope had actually built a tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean and the Pope was coming with these lesions with an army to invade within the Catholic Church Columbus had already gained an exemplary reputation for his faith and the church enjoyed holding the discovery of the new world as one of their achievements over the heads of Protestants Catholics were searching for their own American origin story process already had it it's called Plymouth Rock all right and the Catholics say you know what we're gonna do you one better we're gonna do you two centuries better right screw you right you think you were here first you weren't there was this Catholic dude that was here before the town fathers of Boston white Protestants put up a statue of Leif Eriksson why we'll go you one better we'll go back even further in time and find this other dude this promising guy no wait a second the more Protestants then okay he wasn't Protestant he was like some Scandinavian dude but at least he was like from Northern Europe and he wasn't some swarthy Italian guy like you know sailing for the Spanish crown or whatever Catholics and Protestants being a part of the same benefit society wasn't going to work so father megive me and his parish formed their own just like Italians had done who were also Catholic by and large they used the patriotic image of Columbus to say they were just as American as anyone else yes isn't this a great place so great that a Catholic guy discovered it even though he didn't come to the continental US and even though they're well on and on and on there are many even though it's not about what he did it's about him as a symbol [Music] it's hard to overturn symbols like that because they do work you know they do work in our lives and they unite us Columbus's growing resume now included so much religious virtue that sainthood was seriously considered the way in which this Knights of Columbus history book describes him you would have thought Columbus had two of every animal aboard the Santa Maria [Music] you in 1492 there you go from Batali he gone round the coast of Spain then he spelled Hot Tamale he go up to the Queen of Spain say give me the ships and cargo I'm a son of a [ __ ] in 90 days I'll bring you back Chicago I knew the world was round oh that the new world could be found oh this dirty stinking son of a [ __ ] Columbo the high point of Columbus mania was in Chicago in 1893 for the four hundred and first anniversary of his landfall four hundred and first because the event was so epic and scale it wasn't ready in time a temporary City was built from the ground up but the fact it was late didn't really matter gigantic crowds poured in from around the globe he was portrayed as buddies with Uncle Sam and George Washington Columbia became Uncle Sam's relative advertisements for Columbus sales events the ones you see every year in October sprung up everywhere the Pledge of Allegiance was created specifically for this event and under his name the past present and future greatness of mankind was on full display [Music] [Applause] [Music] Simon of Pokagon who was a Potawatomi gives an address at the world Columbian Exposition where he says this is no celebration for native people this is this is a disaster for us because you know what Columbus started is still going on and it's destroyed us Columbus became a fixture of Americana as tribes out west starved were forced into reservations or massacred this settlers you know who ignored treaties and who ignored you know native boundaries and tribal lands who really felt that they could just go anywhere they wanted and encroach on any territories that they wanted that they never thought for a minute that what they were doing was illegitimate and never thought that any response by native people any rebellion by native people any reaction by native people was legitimate I think they felt that that were they were always attacked that native people were savages and there was no sympathy for them really on the frontier [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music] a proud italian-american successfully pushed for the first official Columbus Day in Colorado in 1907 the Knights of Columbus in Tammany Hall followed with their own lobbying efforts to create more and by the 1920s the majority of states had adopted their own in new york Generoso Pope was one of the richest Italians in America like Columbus he was a Catholic Italian who went west with nothing and made a name for himself a classic example of the American Dream as an influential Democrat in Tammany Hall he became closely associated with Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt Pope's Italian newspapers and radio businesses helped FDR secure the italian-american vote in 1933 a year after becoming president FDR made Columbus Day an official federal holiday an attempt I think by Roosevelt to give give these people something that they could claim to in these very dark times of the depression and it has subsequently become a yearly holiday although no longer on October 12th because it had to be moveable so people could have long weekends but [Music] we have a picture of the $24 purchase of Manhattan in New York City it's a sculpture of Bobby these sculpture near the bottom of Manhattan where this purchase never took place well it shows the Dutchman with a code on a heavier coat than this and the native nearly naked supposed to happen in February the natives going to be dying shortly thereafter of frostbite suppose this happen in August the Dutchman's going to be dying shortly thereafter from heat exhaustion no true people ever dress that way on the same day on the same spot on the earth but we do it to show primitive and civilized and so we don't even think about the incongruity of it all we just accept it because we accept the traditional notion of tripped up primitive and civilized and I'm afraid that that whole notion gets started in our textbook with the Columbus story part of the celebration of American freedom to me should be teaching people how to arrive at their own conclusions instead of repeating what the textbook says that's not an act of freedom that's the act of its opposite right that's an act of indoctrination in the early 20th century historians began to look beneath heroic myths and grand patriotic narratives and tried to explain people's behavior based on their economic and social interests the classic progressive history text was Charles beards and economic interpretation of the Constitution where he looked at the portfolio's of these 55 white guys who signed the Constitution and he tried to argue that they owned or many of them owned failed securities under the Articles of Confederation so it was in their economic self-interest to create this more perfect union it's neither here nor there to say if that's true or not but it's an example of the kind of argument that the progressives were putting forth this isn't just this kind of unfolding manifest destiny of freedom and liberty it's much more complicated has to do with all kinds of diverse interests well a lot of Americans didn't want to hear that Americans wanted to maintain the sacred story of the founding fathers and the revolution but of all the people living in American society the most passionate defenders of the grand patriotic narrative were immigrant Americans what they wanted to do was to defend their particular contribution to it and I think they actually set a template for what happened later in the sense that the pattern that developed since the 1920s was every group gets to insert itself in the story provided that the story stays sacred after World War Two the Columbus story became even more sanitized in American classrooms and with McCarthyism in full swing engaging students and critical thinking about our past and present was a serious risk for educators now that he had his own national holiday history and social studies during the Cold War commonly reduced Columbus into a figure who was monumental but uncontroversial this massive event in world history became even more simplified and vague usually taking up a single page or less what happened to the Tainos or who they were at all continued to be sidestep many textbooks even managed to lift him out of the conquest that he began altogether he was reduced simply into a man with entrepreneurial spirit tremendous courage and great vision to reach new heights it's not only Columbus that we interpret in a kind of deliberately soft way maybe a deliberately positive way it's really all of America and you can see that even in some of the book titles some of them are titled things like the great republic the great experiment I have to put my hand up when I say these or maybe over here land of the free and so help me I think there's another one called home of the brave the American Pageant no other subject has titles like these if you take a course in American literature even which is American it'll have a reader in American literature or leader in u.s. that's something like that you take the chemistry of course it's called chemistry or introduction to chemistry it's not called triumph of the molecules for God's sake I think it's terrific that our students now learn about the multicultural dimensions of America but I would caution against thinking that that's necessarily a progressive outcome because the story I've told in my work highlights the conservative dimensions of all of that you know Frederick Douglass is in there right and that Turner's in there right but you know the book doesn't say now wait a second if we look at Douglass's 1848 speech can we really say that you know this story is a quest for liberty right that's the title of the book right but is it a valid title is that really the theme of our past and again there's no simple answer to that right I'm not saying that the title should be like rise of fascism right what I'm saying is there should be debate in contestation about what the themes are or should be living American culture as a culture around discovery and around exploration so you have you know Columbus discovering America you have Americans discovering the West and western expansion you have the United States going to space so there's this American culture around continuously discovering and I think that Columbus is that kind of push for we have found this new world and by kind of the celebration of us being in this new world despite that being entirely inaccurate so I think that that's just something that's a part of u.s. culture where people want to discover which is just I think a function of kind of in some ways Empire has us expansionism ceased or does it continue you know is it is it taking on new forms is it as overt as it was you know these these are questions that we have to look at and why does Columbus link so closely with what those ideals [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] in in 1992 a different myth emerged and it was the word discovery was pushed aside and people began to well know Native Americans were here we can't call it a discovery anymore so instead we'll call it an encounter and we'll call it an exchange the Columbian Exchange so that well the Europeans got corn and the the Native Americans got horses so we'll call it this exchange so it was it was a different language and it was a language that had more insight to it and more fairness in some respects but also was a language that hid the exploitation that hid the brutality that hid the violence and it it gave you know it gave the people who are doing textbooks and out and they didn't have to talk about that because they could talk about corn and horses one of the really hard things about generalizing about American education is it still so irreducibly local there are fourteen thousand school districts and they said most although not all of the policies for those school districts American history even in America can easily vary from state to state a common example is that a classroom down south might teach that the Civil War was about states rights a classroom up north might say that it was really only about one of those states rights there's no interest group called people for debating the other side and schools people enter this arena not because they want a full discussion of the different dimensions of an issue it's because they want their point of view privilege the lines between opinions facts and beliefs easily get blurred different interpretations get passed down through generations we have this national celebration in which we talk about this great interracial lovin at Plymouth Colony called Thanksgiving right and it's full of myth and and distortion and error I don't necessarily think we need to tell the four-year-olds that you know Myles Standish cut off the head of the Wampanoag Indians 14 year olds I think we should right but there's probably there isn't harm and teaching the four-year-olds the myth provided that there's some correction later and the thing is they're people with their adults today that still believe and I'm gonna add to that want to believe what they were taught in elementary school about various things some people still want to believe that George Washington actually did cut down that cherry tree there's some evidence there's special in elementary school classrooms they just begin every year with discovery so there's a lot of repetition that goes into that right we may not get you know to the Vietnam War right but we all know about Columbus because you begin the school year and you go back to the Explorers you've got a corporation let's say like Pierson that I don't know it's how many hundreds of millions of dollars in sales Pierson has but it's huge and it's a it's a global transnational corporation they have absolutely no interest in getting kids to think critically about the system that they're embedded in and so and they don't all you need is to alienate one important school board member or one member of the state textbook Commission and you're done and the companies invest a huge amount in the development of these resources and it strikes me as quite rational behavior on their part to try to denude the books of controversy because the last thing you want to do is set off any alarm bells please understand that I'm in no way endorsing this I'm just like a historian trying to explain it it makes sense Franklin's WPA he's my candidate for the second worst president in the history of the country he was so bad he's the only president who wanted to get RINO minuted after winning election the first time and his party wouldn't even be nominated there's nobody even met his train but does any text book say anything bad about Franklin W Pierce well no why not well because they don't want to offend your Hampshire they don't want to lose the sails of Concord or some other town in New Hampshire after all he's the only perhaps we now know that Thomas Jefferson fathered people by a slave that he owned we don't know all the details about that but we do know that it occurred and in only a couple of very isolated instances does that appear in American history textbook that seems like a huge problem to me because that's hugely important knowledge what you make it that knowledge is again like all historical matters open to interpretation but you can't even engage in the act of interpretation if you don't actually face the fact there's a textbook that we use here in in Portland and it's called modern world history and it is there's only one class that students take in their whole high school career in Oregon dedicated to the world and it's now called modern world history it's actually named after the textbook no textbook is going to contain everything that it needs to contain to effectively teach the curriculum I grew up in Colorado and they have a specific Colorado history book that you have to like through an elementary-school I know it's heavily focused on like like colonists and sellers like settlers in Colorado so it was very much framed in like the way of talking about like mountain man like like exploiting Colorado and it was so I learned about Columbus in that sense where he was very much construed as a hero and we talked about like like the peaceful interactions with like Native Americans and like it was very much like simplified to where he discovered the United States and that was the only thing that was important of the whole event what's at the core the Columbus myth I think is an initial encounter and almost all the books tell it exactly the same that Columbus comes he plants the flag he names it San Salvador he claims it for the king and queen you know oftentimes there are kind of religious iconography there's there's the cross there's a sword there's flags and so forth and and that's sort of that's just presented unproblematically and they do acknowledge that there were people because they show the people by and large the people who are standing there kind of watching this transpire and and the problem with that is that it it teaches kids that colonialism is okay it it innit it silences any kind of critical capacities on it doesn't it doesn't nurture any kind of questioning any kind of curiosity neither children should have the pressure to learn that truth on their own that needs to be a collective accountability even if it is a the whole thing you mean if it's a very hard thing to teach we have to be very careful when we are presenting that information to students because again we have to make it age-appropriate but there's a way you can do that with students so that you're not presenting falsehoods a reservation teacher in Arizona found that even in a brand-new textbook the same old story of Columbus is still popular enough to find its way even into Native American classrooms after her students did their own detective work the classroom letters to textbook companies demanding change I provided a number of other texts for them a number of different sources they were really appalled when they found out a lot of things that Columbus had actually done they couldn't believe that that would have happened to people who are essentially you know in the group of their ancestors even if even if not their direct ancestors I saw it as you know if we're not going to be thoughtful about this piece of our history if we're gonna let that be what we teach kids then that's that represents the way that we're approaching what students are learning and that represents what we value right now when my students would start to kind of come to consciousness around this they had this moment of why was I lied to and was it that was it did my teacher knew and was kind of protecting me from this truth was it that they didn't know either and they were just kind of teaching how they had been taught but there is a real moment of this kind of sense of betrayal it is like very colonial istic and like very imperial away like classrooms like teach um so for me I didn't understand what like Columbus was and like they just taught it to me as a waiter like it's another thing on the list to teach like students who don't know what they're learning we don't talk about it in a meaningful way but then elicits results we just want to watch over this is what happened this is how it happened these are the individuals that were hurt now let's talk about this it's almost like you're not told the truth about the United States history until you get to college and so then once you get to college it's like mind-blowing right you're like how did no one tell me this is the real truth and Here I am as an adult sitting here finally learning for the first time a lot of a lot of the things the real history and the things that what do you mean natives didn't just give up their land and go over here to a reservation what do you mean me we actually killed them on purpose for money to get rid of them and Niall ate them and it's like all of those things like what do you mean we actually did chemical warfare on Native Americans using smallpox blankets it's like a constant are you kidding me this is the why is none of this taught and the majority people do not get to college in a university to learn the truth and so where do you get to learn the truth we understand that when we thought we believed something was a certain way and science now discovers something new that it's this is really the way it is and we didn't know that before because of new technology we don't just say oh it doesn't exist we change it and we now change our textbooks so that our children understand their real truth so why can't we do that through history III don't think that it's a conscious dismissal of the ills of any of these figures but you've only got so much intellectual bandwidth you've only got so much curriculum you've only got so much time to converse so everything is a reduction and I think that honestly to me the idea that we reduced people to their strengths as history stretches further and further I think there's some value to that [Music] Cantus Danny is is a symbol of discovery that symbol of success a symbol of courage a symbol of someone who had the courage to to to find a new land and those are qualities that all Americans look we want to demonstrate to young people what the true meaning of being an italian-american is and that is basically having integrity hardwork belief in their family Family Values belief in God and this great country that we live in it's supposed to be about everyone joining the parade and no matter what group you are understanding that this this experiment in human civilization which is an experiment like no other it all started with three boats and good came from that and bad came from that but here we are and we keep coming here and people keep coming here because it is something special that was born out of those three boats and that risk that this Explorer took it's a family day it's truly a family day and we hope that that inspires Americans in general across this great country to believe in family to believe in the values that we believe in because then we believe they're excellent that I use they have true values their values that everyone should live by not only Italian Americans but everyone and so that's what we try to demonstrate that's what we try to portray and it's authentic it's real and I say complicit early income bless the United States of America you are defying colonial borders you are not less Indian you are not less human in fact you are more indigenous in your assistant because you're here [Applause] native people in this city are marginalized and we don't have any visibility or representation in this in the city politics and so we recognize the symbolic change doesn't change the material conditions people face in their lives but we realized that this is going to open some new avenues and it's a progressive step forward any time you attempt to humanize native people it's a step in the right direction the state means a lot to me just because of the just because of the way I came to see it and be involved I remember my mom when she was in college she wrote an essay and topic was what's one thing you want to see gone in your lifetime and she said she wanted to see Columbus Day abolished it was funny because that was kind of like a far-fetched concept when she wrote it as first peoples we've been minimized for so many years we get an opportunity to reclaim some of our natural resources or human rights and so it's about our survival as first peoples we have to survive like many other diverse nations throughout this country we've always been here yeah that's why you got the petroglyphs you got the cavemen and it's all native we've always been here in America we call on the United States government to bring into question the validity the legality of the doctrine of discovery we want the church we need the church to revoke this doctrine of discovery to do to reject it to retract it to trash it because this is what has caused the damage from the harm and the trauma and the destruction of our of all ways of life when Seattle passed indigenous peoples day it was such an awakening moment where anyone of indigenous culture gets to celebrate their their history and their culture and where they've come from it's kind of like bringing out our voice which is historically and even a lot of times it is a day a native voices is I mean it's it's non-existent to us it wasn't just resolution either the end I'll be all right it's just simply it was a it's a it's a political statement obviously we can celebrate being indigenous we can celebrate being native each and every day and we do I see the indigenous people say resolution as a catalyst to open up further conversations on various issues so not just historical wrongs and how these historical wrongs and colonization impacts us but how colonization continues to impact us today as holidays come up and as issues come up people are starting to say hey guys here's the real truth here's what really happened do you know that's what this is really about and it's making people more consciously aware and saying oh I didn't I didn't know but now I can learn more and I can change the way the way I've been doing this my whole life and and it's okay it's not a shame on you but it's almost a shame on our education system for continuing to teach the false truths of this country we put in there very specifically that we wanted the the CLO City Council to go to the self school board and say you guys need to refine your education because the misinformation about Columbus that's where it's starting you guys are the ones doing it Columbus is one of the first things when these students are going to learn about [Music] native peoples aren't their oppression they're not their pain that who we are is always going to be more than that we had organized a Dian that was 52 minutes and 30 seconds to represent the 523 years of occupation of this land but also the resilience of native peoples here unfortunately we had an op-ed within the brown Daily Herald which is our campus's newspaper basically stating that Native students should feel grateful for Columbus and positive its theory of like the Columbian Exchange which is that basically everyone benefited from Columbus and for us as Native students on campus it just seemed wildly inaccurate when we saw Phoebe and I that's when I said well we need to show what the actual truth is in terms of the lying in the idea of the Columbia exchange especially in the legacy of what genocide really means for indigenous peoples in the United States a wave of cities states and colleges throughout the US are abandoning Columbus Day grassroots activism led by American Indian groups in the 60s and 70s had grown by the time of Columbus's 500th anniversary 1992 was the first centenary celebration that was met with organized resistance and the first indigenous peoples day was created at UC Berkeley driving the movement today are people who grew up during that time period but what makes them significant is they are far more socially connected and were raised on instant access to information they haven't been confined to a text book or a classroom there's this big talk about indigenous peoples they and we totally agree with it there should be in as people stay but it need not take away Columbus Day and it's implanted with us with in there just people's day I think that there should be an indigenous peoples day and I think it should be established and it should be celebrated and we will we as Italian Americans will celebrate with those people for that holiday and we hope that they look towards us as it's an Americans and celebrate with us well our heritage and culture when the truth comes out do you really want to claim that as your heritage you know there's how many people are still suffering in Germany because of the Nazis and that's a part of history they don't get cover up and they they tell the truth about they still have the the camps and all of the different things that happen and but they still proud to be German and so it's owning your history and owning it correctly and honestly we had one person who was helping us during in getting a lot of this past and a lot of this moving forward Cameron Johnson who said during one meeting I can get flake and egregious insults to Italian Americans to say that like their best hero that they could come up with is Christopher Columbus and I really like that I think that that's a really good way of putting it what I have had is questions by the press and reference to indigenous peoples day versus Columbus Day and some of the activities that Columbus engaged in when he was here some people want to judge Christopher Columbus by today's standards which unfortunately is not fair and not possible because it would do that we go back in history and look at the leaders of the United States who became presidents and and unfortunately you know there were things that they did it would not be approved of today if the argument that Christopher Columbus was a man of his time then we're Native women of this time and that is something that needs to be held accountable - now that like this is just as valid if not more so than Columbus being a man of his time there are certain actions such as slavery that I think could be regarded as sinful at any time when they're practiced the Dominicans as soon as they came to the Americas the first Antonio de Montesinos is preaching against against what's happening to the Tainos from the beginning he's telling Columbus his son Diego the the Admiral that he says you know you can't go to it you can't go to heaven you can't be a Christian and treat people this way those are people of their time as well the Tainos were resisting from the very beginning they were men of their times and women of their times there was an outcry in Spain by members of the church and others were saying you know what's going on there is not right these people are human beings Bartolome de las casas was one of those folks who spoke out and he went there as a colonizer in the beginning but when he saw these atrocities he converted right into somebody who was who became the first bishop ordained in the new world he was an individual who belong to a war in which there was only one true religion which was Christianity and of course las Casas thought that his obligation and his mission in life was to convert the indigenous peoples of the new world to Christianity however he will argue always that you can you couldn't the obligation was to convert the Indians of the new world to Christianity but you could you could you couldn't use force to convert them they they had to convert willingly or voluntarily he has one black mark on his record and it is literally a black mark at one point he's advocated for African slavery to replace Indian slate American Indian slavery but he then took that back and took it back with a vengeance and ask and beg gods pardon and humanity spring for every suggestion and he's from Columbus this time sure he knew better why couldn't Columbus what why haven't people learn more about Columbus well the Columbus Day celebration had a very particular purpose and resonance I know from my experience in the community many younger Italian Americans are more than willing to re-examine Columbus as a national hero more than willing to reexamine a holiday without him what everyone can agree on in our community from young to old left to right and Center is we're not open to discussing the erasing of a day to celebrate italian-american pride so for me my first task is preserving the day on the calendar that celebrates the accomplishments of 25 million very patriotic Americans who've done a lot in this country and continue to do a lot in this country and I refuse to see that lost without a fight the Indians when they were here I don't want to judge them but I'm sure they had their there are times when they did things that are not appropriate to what what would we would look at today and killing and Massacre and so forth but you know that was then and you know you you can't you can't negate all the good things that Indians have done for this country over the years and just where you can't negate all the good things that Italian Americans have done they want to cling to that tradition and I can understand that but I would say the way to regard this to say when we talk about Columbus Day we have to understand that we do so because it was a very important event I think the problem is information is so much more available and it's ever been that sensitivities have to be higher people have the opportunity to learn so much more than they ever learned before about our history about topics about what goes on in the world and other societies so I think there's a reason that we were overly politically sensitive and politically correct but we certainly are what does it incomplete picture give us I mean it is a I mean an incomplete picture gives us only a part of the truth and it dismisses the fact that critical thinking should be involved in making a sound decision do do we want the whole history or do we just what the history that makes us feel good so for teaching our students that for teaching our children that then we just continue to perpetuate generations going forward they don't have all the facts and sometimes you have just enough information to be dangerous we're gonna keep going back and eventually we're gonna find human nature as the root cause of all of our good and all of our bad when you look at what he really did and you look at the real history of how many people were murdered how many people suffered during those times we don't celebrate a Hitler day and would it be the same and so why celebrate somebody that that murdered many people and it would matter what what people it was they were humans so I don't see why we would celebrate somebody that did that I would say that I would I would continue to support Columbus Day if it provided an occasion for the kind of discussion that you and I are talking about and it's an opportunity to discuss the nature of exploration the nature of discovery the nature of conquest all right the nature of exploitation these are all part of the story by the nature of race itself if the point is simply to wave the fry either the American in the Italian flag I don't see a reason to do that we do that on the other days if we look at it in the same way that we look at other controversial issues around symbolism it could probably make a link with the controversy that surrounds the Confederate flag why is the Confederate flag under so much why is that tension when we talk about it why because it's very clear that at one level that Confederate flag is is linked to the slavery of African Americans and a really horrific point in in our country and this is not saying that some of those folks who fought for the Confederacy all of them were not probably evil they probably thought they were you know doing the right thing but you know we have to be clear on what the symbolism is related to and as thinking people as sane people who want a better world supposedly you know we have to let go of those symbols of hatred of of racialism and racism so in my view we should be looking at Columbus in the same way and and there's there's plenty of reasons to let the imagery go there's a lot happening right now in our country that are symptoms of something that happened hundreds of years ago and we're continually being smacked in the face a callback to realization oh that's people are still upset and we could put blinders on and say I don't know everybody's great at we're all here everybody has the same opportunities do they people who tried to save his image or are really just propping up a false image and a false idea of what the conquest was you know the result of everything that we have around us as a result of those early exploitative days it's not just about 500 years ago that those kind of that kind of consciousness that we're nurturing for for kids we're wanting them to take those kind of critical questions and to you know to put that lens down on the world today my eyes the great tragedy of Columbus and subsequent exploration conquest settlement the greatest tragedy was that they met up with a people who in many ways could have been models for peaceful vigorous society [Music] but nevertheless you know what we are still here [Applause] [Music] [Music] you you