Collage: Totem Poles, Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens, Purchase, NY (25 May 2009) and Architectural Relief, Mount Vernon, NY (27 April 2012)

On this 11 October 2021 the debate continues to rage in the United States about today’s holiday. Some call it “Indigenous Peoples' Day,” others continue to call it “Columbus Day” – I call it both, with the term “Indigenous Peoples” at the forefront since there are oral records of North American peoples hunting mammoths, saber-toothed tigers and other Ice-Age mammals some 23,000 years ago (corroborated by the fossilized footprints of a young woman who carried a child on a daring trek along a path interesected numerous times by woolly mammoths more than 10,000 years ago in what is now New Mexico).[1] Aside from the birth of Christ, the beginning of the AD (Anno Domini) years or CE (Common Era), 1492 is perhaps the second most transformative year in human history. When Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) arrived to the Bahamas and was met by the Arawak Indians, their meeting – a meeting of new cultures ushered in a new era that connected the world.

The joining of the “old” and the “new” world, the latter “home to some seventy-five million people… from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego [that] spoke as many as two thousand different languages [and consisted of peoples who were] simple hunter-gatherers [to] sophisticated and dazzling empires”[2] held the promise of “new possibilities.”[3]

Sadly, even though Columbus himself viewed the Arawak natives of the Caribbean favorably – “They are the best people in the world… full of love and without greed” and gave strict instructions that members of his expedition left behind when he returned to Spain, live in peace and treat them with respect, they disobeyed. Worse yet, other Europeans followed in Columbus’ footsteps sans his benevolent desire for peaceful co-existence. They used brute force to conquer empires and committed genocide through mass exterminations and cultural annihilation. They also inadvertently introduced new pathogens such as small pox that not only decimated indigenous populations of the “new” world (up to 90% by some accounts) but marked the advent of the age of global pandemics with latest being the COVID-19 pandemic that spread with lightning speed across the world and killed millions.

Because of this, there are loud demands, at times backed by attempts to intimidate, that Columbus be “cancelled” from American history and his statues toppled with complete and depraved disregard for Italian and Spanish (Spain) heritage. This would be an affront, which is the reason why I call today’s U.S. holiday “Indigenous Peoples'/Columbus Day” since common ground where the cultural heritage of both sides is respected, is the only way the much needed and long-awaited healing process can begin. Anything short of mutual accommodation will lead to new tragedies.

Per Elder Chief Edgar Bowen of the Confederated Tribes of Coos (1926-2011), “a loss of one culture is a loss to all cultures.” Likewise, if the United States continues on its tribalist path where rights declared inalienable and cultural accommodation are purged through a cultural revolution that erases European historical contributions and figures in lieu of an undefined something else, revives generational curses holding today’s people accountable for events in their ancestors’ lives based on ethnic background through misguided and unconscionable labels as “oppressors” and “oppressed” and promotes a monolithic acceptable ideology, the torch of democracy will be extinguished and the United States will cease to exist.

It is not too late and the current trajectory is not irreversible. With this in mind, may all embrace “Indigenous Peoples'/Columbus Day” with newfound respect for each other while acknowledging the horrific pain (slavery, genocide, and cultural annihilation) as well as the tremendous benefits (a connected world that led the development of the Internet, remarkable advances in science, etc.) that ensued in the years, decades and centuries that followed 1492 and the potential to foster in a new era where each person can realize their fullest potential and achieve their greatest dreams through cultural interaction, understanding, respect and human rights protections. It is the only way the human race can survive for millennia to come and our only hope as in reality, though as diverse as we are, we all belong to one race – the human race – who share one precious planet whose future depends on us joining forces to work together for the common good.