Columbus Day should be replaced
The second Monday in October is recognized as an official holida y by both the federal and state governments in appreciation of Christopher Columbus. It is a most peculiar holiday in that it honors a man whose actions would be far below any baseline of defendable behavior today.
He is still celebrated as a hero despite the acknowledgement that he found something that already had been discovered, that he didn’t realize the true location he found and that he initiated some of the greatest atrocities the world has ever seen. People indigenous to North and South America find its continued observance disturbing and the cause of a great deal of frustration between our peoples and the larger society in which we coexist. For this reason, the University of Nebraska Inter-Tribal Exchange (UNITE) writes here today to advocate replacing Columbus Day with a different holiday we will call Native American Day.
The atrocities resulting directly from the actions of Christopher Columbus and indirectly through those who carried on the practices he initiated are well documented by history and are painfully reflected within our society today. These atrocities are celebrated (or at the very least ignored) with the observance of Columbus Day as a part of the great conquering of a continent.
Needless to say, we in UNITE do not accept such a one-sided view of a history our peoples share. We feel it is impossible to show appreciation for indigenous people as human beings and their contributions while justifying their subjugation through means incompatible with the very values whose founding is supposed to be celebrated on this day.
For these reasons we would like to replace Columbus Day with a holiday that promotes the inclusion of the segment of our society that it disregards. Observing Native American Day accomplishes this by highlighting the plight of indigenous peoples along with their contributions and concerns. We want it to be a day that does not support one group at the expense of excluding another, or merely trades between the two, but simply recognizes a people as an important and valued part of our shared history.
With Native American Day, we are asking you to join us in celebrating our culture and expanding awareness of its influence on all of our modern lives. We hope to increase the general appreciation within our society to the point where we too are viewed as one of the many key pieces that make it as great as it is. We are not asking people to ignore the contributions of the Europeans who later came here or to downplay theirs as being less valuable than ours. Our hope for this day is that our contributions be appreciated alongside those whose contributions haven’t been diminished through the influences of modern society.
In replacing Columbus Day, we are taking a stand and hoping you’ll do the same. Our position is straightforward: We stand against genocide, against conquest and the supremacy implicit in its legitimation. Rejecting Columbus Day deals a blow to these flawed notions as they are personified in Christopher Columbus. We think you’ll find that it isn’t so difficult to let go of the pride misplaced in him when you weigh it against what the man really stood for and what it meant for so many others.
Toward our goal we are very pleased that the ASUN Senate has passed a resolution recognizing today, October 12, 2009, as Native American Day here at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We would like to express our gratitude to them for being ahead of the curve in addressing an issue that carries with it a good deal of controversy and is important to so many here and across the country.
To celebrate this Native American Day, UNITE will share some of our culture and traditional foods while hosting a walk-through educational session about Native American influences in today’s society. You can find us in the City Campus Union alcove from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. We hope that you will stop by and participate in our first celebration of the new holiday.
Keegan Bordeaux
senior political science major, and the University of Nebraska Inter-Tribal Exchange.
Obama deserves Peace Prize for what he’s begun
Nebraskans for Peace is pleased that President Barack Obama has received this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee appears to have awarded the prize for President Obama’s work to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons around the world; his efforts to reduce the greenhouse gases that create climate change and threaten global security, forcing mass movements of refugees to escape climate change; and his stance of relying on negotiation, regional alliances and the United Nations instead of unilateral American actions to solve global problems.
We applaud the efforts that won Obama the prize, particularly if he continues them forcefully throughout his administration. We also applaud his pullback of STRATCOM missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic from close to the Russian border because the missiles clearly made Russia feel threatened and did not deal creatively with the strategic threat they were supposed to handle, that is, the possible use of Iranian missiles and nuclear weapons to threaten Israel and other Middle Eastern and Southern European countries.
Finally, we are encouraged by Obama’s Cairo speech indicating that the U.S. and he himself have no quarrel with mainstream Islamic believers but rather with the resort to violent means fostered by al-Qaida and other splinter groups within Islam.
The Prize is given not for what Obama has completed but for what he has begun. Several other world leaders have received the Nobel Peace Prize early in their work at reducing global tensions, including Mr. Gorbachev of Russia. The Prize need not go to old, white septuagenarians. It is designed to recognize good work and encourage more of it. So we do not feel that the granting of the prize is necessarily premature.
At the same time, we are concerned that Obama use his power as president and Nobel laureate to return Iraq to the Iraqi people as quickly as possible; to push forcefully for peace between Israel and Palestine, including embargoing the sale of munitions to either side and the granting of aid to them so long as they are belligerents; and to place the issues of Afghanistan and West Pakistan as quickly as possible in the hands of international peacekeeping agencies such as the United Nations.
Paul Olson
President Nebraskans for Peace
