BS: Indigenous Peoples Day

Subject: Indigenous Peoples Day 2024
From: keberoxu
Date: 14 Oct 24 - 09:05 AM

Anyone doing anything special for this national holiday?

Subject: RE: BS: Indigenous Peoples Day
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Oct 24 - 11:29 AM

Not going to the bank or the post office today.

Yesterday I heard an article (NPR) about the background of Columbus Day as a holiday in the early 1900s and the pushback that began in earnest in the 1960s.

Here's a story about the recent holiday designation (with a clever title "Goodbye, Columbus? Here's what Indigenous Peoples' Day means to Native Americans").

Subject: RE: BS: Indigenous Peoples Day
From: Joe Offer
Date: 14 Oct 24 - 11:41 AM

It seems to be actually happening, that the day is no longer referred to normally as "Columbus Day." The transition seems to be happening here in California with little argument.
Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day!

Subject: RE: BS: Indigenous Peoples Day
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 Oct 24 - 08:57 AM

I find it fascinatig that it was supposed to be an Italian thing, but Columbus turns out to be a jewish Spaniard...

Subject: RE: BS: Indigenous Peoples Day
From: sciencegeek
Date: 16 Oct 24 - 02:47 PM

as history does so often... Oh, the tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. For 7 centuries the Iberian Peninsula was a bastion of religious freedom and high culture far above the rest of Europe... when it was under Islamic leadership. That changed when a Christian dynasty claimed the throne and Jews and Muslims either converted or went into exile. Many of the "converts" still practiced in secret but where tolerated because of their usefulness to the aristocracy. A muddled mess at best.

As for Christoforo, he was a scoundrel looking to get rich and when it turned out there were no spice trade to be found, he decided that slaves would do instead. Not a nice man, but that fact got whitewashed over the centuries.

Columbus was a native of Genoa, Italy, and over the years Italian Americans took up the cause of honoring his achievement. A mass lynching of Italian Americans in New Orleans in 1891 prompted U.S. President Benjamin Harrison to make the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival a national holiday in 1892, though he intended it to be a one-time celebration. In 1937 U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed the day an annual holiday, in part because of the petition by the Knights of Columbus and to keep political support for his New Deal legislation much opposed by the upper class elitists who did not suffer much from the Great Depression.