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News :: Human Rights : Organizing |
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Brookline High School Students Repudiate Columbus Day |
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by Sofia Jarrin
Email: sofiajt (nospam) yahoo.com (verified) |
09 Oct 2006
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Brookline, Mass – The Tribal Community Alliance, a student organization at Brookline High School that works on raising awareness about indigenous rights, brought friends and supporters together to protest the Columbus Day holiday. Standing on Coolidge Corner with banners that read “Stop Celebrating Genocide” and “Support Indigenous People Day”, the protesters confronted what they say is a wrong account of history. |
 Photos of Brookline High Columbus Protest |
Photos by Jonathan McIntosh. Also see:
http://capedmaskedandarmed.com/photoblog
“I think 99% of what people think of Columbus is wrong,” said Emily McLaughlin, 16, a Brookline High School student. “He did not have great relations with Native Americans and he was definitely not a hero. He shouldn’t be celebrated.”
Emily herself became active in the Tribal Community Alliance when one of her best friends, Alicia Mucha, 16, found out about a year ago that she is part Native American. Alicia was raised as being half white, but in reality her father is black and her mother is African American, Cherokee, and Mohawk. The two friends began asking questions and became very interested in Native American struggles, culture, and history; things that they weren’t taught in school.
“I want for people to realize to realize that where they live is where people were murdered, were raped, where families were torn apart. They don’t see that genocide happened right here. They think that it only happened in other countries,” said Alicia, now one of the lead organizers of Tribal Community Alliance. She said she tries very hard not to get upset during History class to counteract common misconceptions that her classmates have about indigenous people’s struggles.
“Just raising people’s awareness is important because a lot of people don’t know. I was shocked to learn that I am living in a country that was basically founded on genocide,” said Emily, “In elementary school they teach you so many lies. It’s ridiculous. They tell you that the pilgrims were nice people and never hurt anyone, and sometimes they even portray Native Americans as being the enemy.”
Although many bystanders did not understand the students’ point of view, others fully supported their cause. “Columbus was a butcher and a slave trader,” said Vion Decew, 46, from Newton. “He came here for profit and he was not the first person here. People have been coming here since the Phoenicians. They have been coming here for thousands of years, so he wasn’t a great discoverer.”
She and her husband make an effort to tell their kids what they haven’t been taught in school, about how tens of millions of indigenous people who died after the arrival of the Portuguese, Spanish, and English invaders. She explained that in New Mexico, where much of her family is from, it is more common knowledge that Columbus is not a heroic figure. “In general, history’s written by the people who won and who are still around. History is owned by the people in power,” she said.
“I was kind of brought up like everybody else. I had the vision of Thanksgiving and Columbus Day,” said Alicia. “I was comfortable with my ignorance, but now I’m so happy that I know. That I don’t have a wool wrapped around my eyes anymore.”
Alicia said reading books like American Holocaust and Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States helped her to learn the truth and come to terms with the suffering of her own people. An excerpt from Zinn’s book reads: “Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that, although the slaves were ‘naked as the day they were born,’ they showed ‘no more embarrassment than animals.’ Columbus later wrote: ‘Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.’”
Rytu Singh, 19, from India was impressed by the Brookline High students presence and agreed that imperial powers often try to rewrite history as the British attempted in her own country. She said that much of the Indian history, which was mostly based on oral tradition, was lost because of the British occupation of India from 1773 to 1947 and British-run schools. “My cousins go to schools where I know they are trying to re-evaluate the history lessons there,” she said. Re-writing India’s history has not gone without controversy, however, as recent accounts surfaced about nationalist groups trying to deny the migration of Aryan groups to India that among other things, set up a caste system to subjugate indigenous groups there.
Members of the Tribal Community Alliance hope that in Massachusetts Columbus Day is eventually replaced with Indigenous People’s Day like it has been in states like Puerto Rico and most Latin American countries. “Native Americans are in the greatest state of poverty in this country. They are the people that are the most oppressed, the most forgotten, and the most mistreated by this government. And people have forgotten about them,” said Alicia. |
 Photos of Brookline High Columbus Protest |
 Photos of Brookline High Columbus Protest |
 Photos of Brookline High Columbus Protest |
 Photos of Brookline High Columbus Protest |
 Photos of Brookline High Columbus Protest |
 Photos of Brookline High Columbus Protest |
 Photos of Brookline High Columbus Protest |
 Photos of Brookline High Columbus Protest |
 Photos of Brookline High Columbus Protest |
 Photos of Brookline High Columbus Protest |
 Photos of Brookline High Columbus Protest |
 Photos of Brookline High Columbus Protest |
 Photos of Brookline High Columbus Protest |
 Photos of Brookline High Columbus Protest |
 Photos of Brookline High Columbus Protest |
See also:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/PeoplesHistory_Zinn.html
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