Today is the second Monday of October, and with some degree of trepidation, we also say it is Columbus Day. Unless you are a federal employee, the day will pass much the same as any other day. Federal employees get the day off. Few others do. Furthermore, in many States, the day is even scorned rather than memorialized. These States include South Dakota, Wisconsin, Alaska, parts of California, and others. Each State has replaced the day’s name with names like “Native American Day". In Minnesota, October’s second Monday legally remains Columbus Day; however, just one year ago this month, Governor Tim Walz overrode that by signing an official proclamation that made the day, “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”
What’s the discontent about?
Controversy over Columbus Day dates back to the 19th century, when anti-immigrant groups in the United States rejected the holiday because of its association with Catholicism. More recently, Columbus has been denigrated as the one who opened North America to dynamics like slavery and the ravages to the original inhabitants of the continent’s lands and people.
Who started Columbus Day? President Benjamin Harrison, in 1892, on the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ landing, proclaimed the day a legal holiday. In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made the day a national holiday due to intense lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, an influential fraternal organization.
And so on . . .
But why the fuss over Columbus? He really doesn’t matter much as he is apparently a usurper of the title of “first to set foot on the continent.” After all, he did think he was in India.
Who was the first? Those of Norse heritage may know that much evidence exists that in ~1001 A.D., nearly 500 years before Columbus was born, Leif Eriksson (c.970 – C. 1020) and his band of explorers, left their homelands (Iceland/Norway) behind in search of a better world, and are thought to be the first Europeans to have jumped off their ships and land on the shores of continental North America, it is thought, somewhere in the vicinity of Newfoundland in Eastern Canada. This opened a new land, rich with resources, for the Vikings to explore.
You are probably asking, “What does all this have to do with the poetry theme of Monday posts?” It’s about remembering in celebration, particularly celebration about living in North America, specifically, the United States and Canada. Certainly, we can and do find plenty of shortcomings, especially social, in these territories; however, there are many reasons for gratitude for the lands we live in.
So, in commemorating this controversial day, let’s begin with a poem from a descendant of the continent’s indigenous inhabitants – Heid E. Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe, born in Breckenridge, Minnesota, raised there, and in Wahpeton, North Dakota where her parents taught at the Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school. She now lives in Minnesota.
Peace Path
This path our people walked
one hundred two hundred endless years
since the tall grass opened for us
and we breathed the incense that sun on prairie
offers to sky
Peace offering with each breath
each footstep out of woods
to grasslands plotted with history
removal remediation restoration
Peace flag of fringed prairie orchid
green glow within white froth
calling a moth who nightly
seeks the now-rare scent invisible to us
invisible history of this place
where our great-grandfather a boy
beside two priests and 900 warriors
gaze intent in an 1870 photo
his garments white as orchids
Peace flag white banner with red cross
crowned with thorns held by a boy
at the elbow of a priest
beside Ojibwe warriors beside Dakota warriors
Peace offered after smoke and dance
and Ojibwe gifts of elaborate beaded garments
thrown back in refusal
by Dakota Warriors torn with grief
since their brother’s murder
This is the path our people ran
through white flags of prairie plants
Ojibwe calling Dakota back
to sign one last and unbroken treaty
Peace offering with each breath
each footstep out of woods
to grasslands plotted with history
removal remediation restoration
Two Dakota held up as great men
humbled themselves
to an offer of peace
before a long walk south
before our people entered the trail
walking west and north
where you walk now
where we seek the source
the now-rare scent
invisible as history
history the tall grass opens for us
Breathe the incense of sun on prairie
Offer peace to the sky
Copyright © 2016 by Heid E. Erdrich. This poem was commissioned by the Academy of American Poets and funded by a National Endowment for the Arts Imagine Our Parks grant. URL: https://poets.org/poem/peace-path
Next, let’s celebrate the Black nation, the peoples who had almost no choice in coming to North America, and when they did, were not welcomed as citizens, much less equal human beings, for centuries. How much of this remains true? Why? African American poetry predates the written word and is linked to a rich oral tradition.
Langston Hughes was one of the most important writers and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance, which was the African American artistic movement in the 1920s that celebrated black life and culture. Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance.
Words Like Freedom
There are words like Freedom
Sweet and wonderful to say.
On my heartstrings freedom sings
All day every day.
There are words like Liberty
That almost make me cry.
If you had known what I know
You would know why.”
I too, sing America
I too, sing America
I am the darker brother
They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes
But I laugh and eat well and grow strong
Tomorrow, I'll be at the table when company comes
Nobody'll dare say to me, "Eat in the kitchen"
Then, besides
They'll see how beautiful we are and be ashamed
I, too, am America
From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes published by Alfred A. Knopf/Vintage. Copyright © 1994 by the Estate of Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes - 1902-1967.
Almost 14 million people immigrated to the United States through New York between the late 1800s to the 1920s and saw the Statue of Liberty as a "welcome." Other than North America’s indigenous peoples, all but a few of us are immigrants, or the descendants of immigrants. Ethnic groups were and are persecuted. Throughout our history (and the majority of countries’ histories), some group is always considered by others as less worthy, less human, less American.
Let’s pause to remember what countless (mostly European) immigrants saw as they sailed into New York’s harbor. Do Americans mean this? Did they ever? After all the Statue of Liberty was a gift to the U.S. from France The Statue of Liberty was a gift from France following the American Civil War and abolition of slavery. It was proposed by Edouard de Laboulaye, who was a French political thinker and abolitionist, who wanted to "commemorate the perseverance of freedom and democracy in the United States and to honor the work of the late president Abraham Lincoln," according to the National Park Service.
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
The following poem, written by the renowned American poet, essayist and feminist, Adrienne Rich (1929-2012), discusses the difficult choices and subsequent risks immigrants must face when deciding to leave their native lands in search of a new home.
Prospective Immigrants Please Note
Either you will
go through this door
or you will not go through.
If you go through
there is always the risk
of remembering your name.
Things look at you doubly
and you must look back
and let them happen.
If you do not go through
it is possible
to live worthily
to maintain your attitudes
to hold your position
to die bravely
but much will blind you,
much will evade you,
at what cost who knows?
The door itself makes no promises.
It is only a door.
Background – given in opening remarks.
Exploration #1: Heid Erdrich does not shy from history and treaties of the Ojibwe and Dakota people. Do you think “first nations” peoples can perpetrate among themselves the same “mistakes” made by Europeans of the first occupation.
Exploration #2: The North American continent was occupied by indigenous peoples at least 15,000 years before the first Europeans arrived. The ancestors of living Native Americans came from Asia via Beringia. Why do we continue to credit Europeans with “discovering” the continent?
Exploration #3: Are you an immigrant or a child of recent immigrants? Do you personally know immigrants? What do you observe about immigrant status?
Exploration #4: “It is only a door.” Consider.
Exploration #5: Is the motive behind this post the fact that JPSavage unhappily attended Columbus High School in Marshfield, Wisconsin?
Epilogue - For Christopher Columbus Fans
I guess we should finish with the fairly familiar ditty that was used to teach some history in grade schools. I had to learn it. Did you?
In fourteen hundred ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
He had three ships and left from Spain;
He sailed through sunshine, wind, and rain.
He sailed by night; he sailed by day;
He used the stars to find his way.
A compass also helped him know
How to find the way to go.
Ninety sailors were on board;
Some men worked while others snored.
Then the workers went to sleep;
And others watched the ocean deep.
Day after day they looked for land;
They dreamed of trees and rocks and sand.
October 12 their dream came true,
You never saw a happier crew!
“Indians! Indians!” Columbus cried;
His heart was filled with joyful pride.
But “India” the land was not;
It was the Bahamas, and it was hot.
The Arakawa natives were very nice;
They gave the sailors food and spice.
Columbus sailed on to find some gold
To bring back home, as he’d been told.
He made the trip again and again,
Trading gold to bring to Spain.
The first American? No, not quite.
But Columbus was brave, and he was bright.
#1: According to "Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America From 1890 to Present" by David Treuer, 2019, the Meadowcroft Rockshelter, SW of Pittsburgh, is dated to have been used continuously for hundreds of years may stretch back 19,000 years; The Monte Verde site in Chile has been dated to 19,000 years ago. They show that people inhabited North America before the Bering land bridge formed 10,000 years ago or on perhaps earlier land bridges linking continents 30,000 years ago. History that sticks to the old model of New World history as something made by white people and done to Indian people is not a real history of this place. Explorers brought European history to histories already there. They didn't discover the New World, they met Indians with distinct histories and concepts of themselves and their place in the world.
ReplyDelete#2 From my observations and interactions, the reading of dozens of Indigenous-authored books, Indigenous people have survived and prospered into the 21st Century against the odds. The mantra, "Go Cry Over Someone Else's Tragedy," was originated by the1491s Comedy team beginning in 2009. Further exploration about them can be found and enjoyed with education to follow. Some of my most favorite features are found under the heading: Represent. Some of my Ojibwe relatives attend colleges as students and with their education gone on to be teachers and social leaders within their communities.
ReplyDeleteYour Exploration No. 1 asked if First Nations people can perpetrate among themselves the same mistakes made by Europeans of the first occupation . . . First of all Indigenous people are human beings with the same foibles. They've sought power, greed, material riches like anyone else on the planet; there are jerks among them, just like 'non-Indigenous' groups possess.
ReplyDeleteAs a kid I thought the poem was “In 1942, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”
I marveled at how much progress had been made by 1947 when I was born. Then I thought, wait a minute! Wasn’t Pearl Harbor In 1941?”
The poem should end: “He raped the land, the natives too. Then wiped them out, he and his crew.”