Indigenous People's Day versus Columbus Day, whose side of the story has the power to determine which perspective is told?
This popular socio-political controversy spiking a heightened interest in history in October argues whose side of the story has the power to determine whose/which perspective is told by upholding the principles on which such symbol stands. This empowers the collective subconscious by drawing a line between factions thereby increasing hostility instead of conquering peace between and among them.
Such is the power of media.
Do you agree that Columbus Day gives homage to kings and imperial powers and European influence whereas Indigenous Peoples Day attempts to bring visibility to the indigenous peoples, of which there were many, many peoples. In some ways, it's like MLK Day because it brings visibility to an oppressed people's cause.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/06/us/berkeley-indigenous-peoples-day.html?smid=url-share The facts:
In California, Berkeley was the first city to celebrate Indigenous People's Day in 1996.
Indigenous Peoples' Day is a holiday that celebrates and honors Native American peoples and commemorates their histories and cultures in the US on October 12.
In 2020, President Joe Biden issued the first-ever presidential proclamation of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, boosting a refocus from Christopher Columbus Day towards an appreciation of Native peoples.
That which is considered factual in history that we choose to celebrate as a national symbol of pride and accomplishment for generations to come comes under scrutiny. It sparks our emotions and makes us self reflect.
Are we by this act of reconning of the indigenous people's culture and acknowledgment of their holocaust being condemned for what Columbus represents or are we learning from it and developing a higher consciousness?
The stories we tell over unaware of the symbolic message legendary characters and events play on future generations ultimately guide our collective subconscious minds towards what we see manifested in the world around us and within each of us.
Without realizing what holidays stand for or whose side of thestory is missing, we condone and honor injustice, ignorance, lack of empathy, and hatred selfserviently. We do so even knowing it costs us life each day. Lives won't matter until they're close friends and family that look and sound like us.
You may argue it is human nature, and you're right.
Are humans able to evolve into a greater consciousness?
They can if they will to say "I am that I am."
These ancestors' words reach across centuries to help us live through the apocalypse today with courage and dignity.
This stunning collection of more than two hundred meditations introduces us to the Spirit Wheel and the four directions that ground Native spirituality: tradition, kinship, vision, and balance.
"I stand in the midst of creation's wheel
And watch in wonder the quiet majesty of its turning.
We are in the care of a love without limit or definition
Under the protection of a love that never looks away." by Steven Charleston
Notable Native People highlights the vital impact Indigenous dreamers and leaders have made on the world.
These ancestors' words reach across centuries to help us live through the apocalypse today with courage and dignity.
Has it ever been OK by anyone's reasoning to intrude into somebody else's livelihood and worship space and pretend they weren't there first, proceed to take their land and culture away, and impose their law on the land? A law against allowing the free spirit of the people on the land! But cities and bombs won't last forever. What new level of consciousness do you wish future generations to develop?
What side of History are you on? by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: https://amzn.to/3ZSh9zl" Covering one hundred years of social conflict and progress across the twentieth century and into the early years of the twenty-first, this book reveals how protest songs have given voice to the needs and challenges of a nation and asked its citizens to take a stand--asking the question "Which side are you on?"
What better way than to express yourself with the many mediums of art!
What better way than to say it than a song?
Those who feel entitled to call others lazy for not wanting to keep on breaking their backs for nothing should think of the few lucky ones who do nothing but sign off check after check at a rate of thousands earned per day, while few social responsibilities hang over their heads. What entitles them? WEALTH +POLITICS = POWER = institutionalized poverty that creates wealth for service providers including small business owners.
Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up people’s history radically reframes US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative.
What is wealth and how is it created? What historical social responsibilities and repercussions accrue amassing millions and billions, sending thousands to their grave, and bringing pain into the world?
Was Columbus (representing those who funded his voyage) saying, "This is our people's manifest destiny; so, move over; stay out of our way; off you go to the middle of nowhere reserved just for you. Let's give you a hand with food and shelter, we'll even make reparations and teach your children how NOT BE THEMSELVES?"
This was the plan put into action which HAS ALMOST annihilated paradisiac and utopian societies from whom we have yet a lot to learn. It's time we recognize their existence and wisdom. If we fail to, we will be failing our children's children and covering up the self-destructive forces of humanity on the wheel of samsara.
The International Indigenous People's Day was created by a proclamation of the United Nations on August 9, 1994.https://undp-nature.exposure.co
Columbus may have been just a poor cartographer and sailor trying to find a new route to commerce with the East (especially India), a forune seeker, funded by the Queen of Spain who was in need of silver and gold after 500 years of ousting the Moors. Her fiercest competition came from and the Portuguese credited to have designed the fast ships called caravel. The latter were, indeed, the first to colonize India in 1498, just six years after Columbus disembarked on the island of San Salvador thinking he had reached Hindustan.
Although other explorers had already reached the coasts of North and South America by 1492: Those who had traversed the Strait of Bering across the North Atlantic Ocean during the last Ice Age and settled the land in accordance with the natural cycles of early agricultural societies were the first known settlers we call indigenous people.
He discusses the accumulating evidence from deep-sea sediment cores, as well as ice cores from Greenland and the Antarctic, that suggests fast-changing ice age climates may have directly impacted the evolution of our species and the course of human migration and civilization.
Although there were already people on the land, lots of people, millions, we must recognize that this land we call America was unknown to what we call "the old world" kingdoms that pursued worldwide colonization and slavery everywhere they set foot,
The treacherous voyage Columbus and the three ships, l Niña, La Pinta, and La Santa Maria, to the island of San Salvador created a bridge for disease and loss of liberty for the indigenous people of the land. Honoring their perseverance, wisdom, and survival when we tell the story of the Americas, atones past injuries and moves us further along in the pursuit of peace.
To know about about the time times first learn why everyone wanted to trade with India and the Far East. Today, we are still trading with India and China, but what has become of the first Americans?
Detailed in the ancient history of Ireland, is the legendary 6 century, CE, story of a monk (Saint Brendan) who navigated to the coast of N.A. in a type of boat called the Currach with a canopy made out of animal skins.
In 1969. Congress designated October 9 as the Leif Ericson Day in honor of the Viking's Norse settlement in what is now Newfoundland, Canada.
In fact, 71 years before 1492, Zheng, a Chinese commander of a large armada explored Southeast Asia and traveled along the North and South American coast.
Really, no one can discover a place that is inhabited, they may find out where a place is located by chance, visit it, immigrate to it, colonize it, raid it, and invade it. Perhaps, just maybe one day, we could tell the story of how we share it with the original peoples of the land.
But it would be a very different story to tell if there were no sociocultural injustices or crimes made for the sake of riches and religion. After all, we all want to be that good guy, hero, or savior, but guns and bombs won't heal our hearts.
So there are only martyrs on both sides when peace on earth is never attained in our minds first. That's not the world our children deserve. The gift is peace.
As a civilization, learning from our past means improving future outcomes. And these can be measured in the level of personal, social, political, and financial Peace there is.
It's not so much whose day we commemorate that makes history but the symbolically values that represent atonement which set the course for a better world starting right here at home. Sacajewa or Columbus?
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