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The Historical Debt to Native People Has Still Not Been Paid


The Myth Keepers of Columbus


By ROBERT ROBIDEAU

In 1993, 500 years after European invaders of the Americas had brought the
first Native Americans to Europe in chains, my plane landed in Barcelona,
Spain, I had been invited to the International Cultural Symposium to speak
on behalf of Leonard Peltier. The day after my arrival, I took a walk down
their famous Rambler to the Placa del Portal de la Pau where I ran head 
long
into a monument of Christopher Columbus. Build for the World Exhibition in
1888, the iron column is an impressive 197 feet tall and weighs 205 
tons. On
top the column stands a 26 foot statue of Columbus with head sculptured
high, positioned to face out over its outstretched arm, with finger 
pointing
over the Mediterranean sea and out to the distant horizon toward the
Americas. As I moved around its base I discovered a series of relief's
depicting the "new lands." What I saw was not the innocence that had been
carved, but instead the first stages of colonization, the rape and plunder
of the land and people of the Americas.

Christopher Columbus was born in 1451 in Genoa, Italy. At age 14 he 
became a
sailor, shipwrecked off of Portugal in 1470, he remained until his idea to
sail west to India, known then as "Hindustan," was financed by Ferdinand 
and
Isabella of Spain in 1492. He reached the Bahamas on October 12th, visited
Cuba and Hispaniola (Haiti), where he left a small colony before returning
to Spain on March 15th, 1493 bringing with him 6 captive Taino people, 
taken
from the Caribbean islands, who were presented to Ferdinand and Isabella in
the royal court of Barcelona as proof of his travel. A painting that today
hangs in (government building) show the Taino people at the feet of the 
king
and queen in servile postures of slaves. The 6 Tainos never saw home again,
their spirits still linger in the streets of Barcelona.

In his delirium Columbus thought he landed in Paradise. He wrote in his
journal that Taínos had beautiful, tall, slender olive bodies. They wore
short haircuts with a long hank at the back of the head. They were
clean-shaven and hairless. According to Columbus the Taíno tongue was
"gentle, the sweetest in the world, always with a laugh."

Friendly relations did not last long, many Tainos were beaten and murdered.
The Spanish brought diseases with them that the Tainos lacked immunity to.
The weapons that the Spanish were far superior to the Tainos. An estimated
fifty thousand Tainos perished within two years of Columbus landing. The
Spanish jammed more then five hundred Taino prisoners into a boat for 
Spain.
They became homeless in their own land. They were devastated by abuse,
starvation, and disease. Life was never the same for Indians of the 
Americas
after 1492. Puerto Rico, an Island once occupied by Tainos were almost 
wiped
out within two decades.

With the arrival of Columbus begin the onslaught of genocide in the 
Americas
that Europeans only whisper about. The legacy of Columbus has kept Native
Americans at the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder. Population
surveys of the Americas estimates that at the time Columbus stumbled onto
the Americas 100 million people inhabited it, a count far greater then that
of all Europe in those times. More then 10 million resided in the United
States, today less then a million remain in the United States. Many tribes
have long become decimated and extinct.

The myth that continues to be propagated is that Native Americans were
savages and the civilization brought by Europeans saved them. Reality is
that the foods, medicines and political structures of Native Nations in the
Americas not only saved Europeans from constant famine in Europe but also
taught them much about freedom and democracy, later adopted by the
forefathers of Euro Americans. The model of Iroquois Confederacy
(Haudenosaunee, also known as the League of Peace and Power) enabled the
United States to form in part its constitution which, thanks to President
Bush's Patriot Act, is well on the road to become myth. Today, the myth of
democracy, has become a perverted tool to dominate, subjugate and colonize
other countries around the world such as Iraq and Palestine.

The United States held their first celebration of the "discovery of 
America"
in New York, on October 12, 1792. At that time the only statue of Columbus
in existence was in New York. In 1876, Italian Americans of Philadelphia
erected a statue of Columbus in Fairmount Park. In 1905 Italian 
Americans in
Denver, Colorado were the first to observe Columbus Day. It was not until
September 1934 that President Franklin D. Roosevelt made it national
holiday. Finally, Columbus Day became a federal legal holiday in 1971 after
lobbying from the National Columbus Day Committee. Columbus Day or "El Dia
de la Raza" has brought a wave of dissent across the United States and
Canada by many Native Americans who feel that it perpetuates a myth that
breeds bias and racism toward them.

Since 1970 Native Americans have gathered to commemorate a National Day of
Mourning on Thanksgiving in remembrance of the genocide of millions of
Native Peoples, theft of Native lands and the relentless assault on Native
cultures since Columbus open the flood gates to European invasions of the
Americas. It is curious that Columbus Day is, except for religious 
holidays,
the only historical event which all Pan-American countries celebrate.

Since 1989 the Colorado AIM chapter has lead a protest against the Columbus
Day Parade in Denver declaring, "As the original people of this land, we
cannot and will not, tolerate social and political festivities that
celebrate our genocide. We are committed to the active, open and public
rejection of disrespect and racism in its various forms---including 
Columbus
Day and Columbus Day Parades." For these last 17 years they have tried to
educate the general public about their feelings for Columbus Day; they have
protested, blockaded and gone to jail for their efforts to stop this parade
of indoctrinated myth keepers.

The issue of Columbus and Columbus Day is not easily resolvable in a 
society
spoon feed on its propaganda of myths and historical lies that propagate 
the
idea that Europeans were a superior race of two legged homo sapiens that
came to save the Indians from their barbaric ways. The Europeans who came
and settled invented and schooled the myth that they had created the New
World by their imaged "discovery, " just as they had come to create the
creation myth of its origins known as the "Bearing Strait Theory." Native
Americans just had to have come from somewhere, but not the western
hemisphere.

What good does Columbus Day contribute by celebrating racist propaganda and
myths that perpetuate genocide in institutions of education. Nazi 
Germany is
perfect example of where such false, racist and opportunistic ideas lead.
The most popularly believed myth of scholars is that Native Americans were
Jews. Louis Hennepin, in his New Discovery of a Vast Country in America
wrote, "These savages originally sprung from the Jews," because they lived
"in a form of tents, like as did Jews" and they are "subtle and crafty as
Jews."

The first thought that crept to mind was that the encounter with the statue
of Columbus must represent some sort of warning and I had better watch my
step. Sure enough in 1996 I was teased back to Barcelona, Spain where I
began a new life out of the reach of the FBI and the emergence of fascist
rumblings in the States.

Europe too, I felt, had a historical debt and there was social need to
transmit that Indian cultures had not been completely destroyed. We still
existed despite 500 years of genocide and so I founded an AIM museum to
bring awareness of it to Europeans so that they would not forget.

Robert Robideau is Co Director Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. He can be
reached at: robertrobideau at yahoo.com

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