Who's On First

From CNN:

Columbus Day often brings to mind the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. This Monday, some cities and states would rather you think of the Sioux, the Squamish and the Chippewa.

For the first time this year, Seattle and Minneapolis will recognize the second Monday in October as "Indigenous People's Day." The cities join a growing list of jurisdictions choosing to shift the holiday's focus from Christopher Columbus to the people he encountered in the New World and their modern-day descendants.

Dudette, given that line in your second paragraph, shouldn’t you mention, in that first 'graph, the Taino? After all, our man Chris landed in the Bahamas and no Europeans had yet met (slaughtered, subjugated and otherwise abused) the Squamish (Skwxwú7mesh) until late in the 18th century, the Sioux (Lakota or Dakota) sometime during that same century or the Chippewa (Ojibwe) in the 17th century.

Chris may have gotten to the islands before the condo developers but not by much.

When I was in elementary school the word was that Columbus discovered *snort* America. Not only was this joint already mega populated, he wasn’t the first European to get here-ish. That title goes to Mister Leif Eriksson, who found himself on the north east coast of Canada (Nova Scotia which he named Vinland) about 400 or so years before Columbus landed in Honeymoon Heaven.

There’s no mention anywhere of Leif meeting, let alone brutalizing and/or enslaving any prior residents he might have encountered — unlike Chris and his band of invaders.

From the Seattle Times:

“Italian Americans are deeply offended,” said Lisa Marchese, a lawyer affiliated with the Order Sons of Italy in America and the Italian-American Chamber of Commerce of the Pacific Northwest. “By this resolution you say to all Italian Americans that the city of Seattle no longer deems your heritage or your community worthy of recognition.”

What melodramatic emo bullshit! Such all-or-nothing, dichotomizing, fallacious feces! Also too, I'm Italian American and I'm not offended you self aggrandizing, smug sack of scungilli excrement.

And no, you soap opera queen/faux outrage pundit wannabe — this is about finally honoring the peoples WHO WERE ALREADY HERE. No one’s dissing the Italian people OR Italian Americans. This is about viewing history as it was as opposed to the way the conquerors and their Disneyfying scribes handed it down to us.

“History is written by the victors.”
~Winston Churchill

“History is written by the winners.”
~George Orwell