Columbus & Thanksgiving days
We should celebrate Columbus Day as an Italian American celebration. It’s a day to honor all Italian Americans who have worked hard to make our country great.
I would prefer to call it Nancy Pelosi Day.
We should celebrate Thanksgiving Day as the day we give thanks to God for all we have received and for Native Americans, who helped English Americans survive.
Our country owes a profound debt to the Native Americans.
This letter has not been edited.
I would think you would call both days Nancy Pelosi day since she's a phony like Columbus and also an Old Turkey of a politician.
Gobble, Gobble and what's a matter you Nancy? Shut uppa your stupid face Pelosi!
Posted by on October 12, 2007 03:14 PMThanksgiving Day is a day to celebrate the feast our ancestors shared in "New England". Columbus never set foot on the soil of this country.
Posted by Stan B on October 12, 2007 03:35 PMHaH! We celebrated Italian last year for
Thanksgiving. This year we'll pay tribute to
our Native Americans. And we're neither
Italian,black,NA, or white. :)
No Turkey day for the turkey Polosi.
Scott, do you mean American Indians? I am also a Native American, white skin and all.
Posted by Ben on October 13, 2007 05:57 AMHow about Ward Churchill Day? I bet the famous "Lost Fugawi Tribe" would back that one, bigtime.
Posted by Hank on October 13, 2007 03:28 PMThanksgiving is not what the Indians had in mind when one says to the other as they watch the ships unloading: "There goes the neighborhood." Can't blame them for not celebrating that holiday.
Posted by RG, Deicide on October 13, 2007 04:02 PMI just wish that native americans would protest any hispanic holidays with the same hatred they do Columbus day as it was the Spanish crown that paid for it all and started everything. Remember Cortez and the Conqistidors killing and exterminating the Mayans, Aztecs and all? or is that too much for you to hate?
Posted by FTI on October 13, 2007 11:16 PMIn line with RG-
The American Indians found out what happens when you don't control immigration!
Posted by fiesty on October 14, 2007 07:25 AMFTI-
I think you miss the point. It doesn't have to do with racism or funding. It has to do with the sheer insanity of specifically celebrating the actions of a horrible man whose actions don't deserve anything of the type- Columbus' actions in exterminating the Tainos was so brutal and horrific even for the times, that a monk wrote back to Spain a letter condemning him.
It just doesn't make sense- except for numbers, it's on par with a holiday celebrating Hitler. It's not only immoral, but my tax dollars shouldn't go to condoning a genocidal maniac.
If you want a holiday for Italian-Americans or "discovery" of North America, then call it that.
Posted by fiesty on October 14, 2007 07:34 AMoh, so all the genocidal crimes commited by the Spaniards are excused in your eyes fiesty? Its cool, I understand that the Spaniards and their ancestors are hereby forgiven for all crimes that they commited but Columbus himself be found guilty and he alone be held responsible.
Posted by FTI on October 14, 2007 09:43 AMWho exactly,witnessed Columbus killing many Indians?
Why do the protesters speak up now?
Why is Columbus Day a federal Holiday?
Why is there a small group of people who want to deny Italian people their heritage?
This holiday has been around for many ,many years.
It's only been the past few years that the protesters have tried to stop it.Why now?
I still would like to know how do you prove Columbus murdered many Indians?
Posted by on October 14, 2007 10:32 AMI watched on PBS two hours on Columbus; Italians get no credit for his voyage; if it hadn't been for one particular Spaniard (who eventually took of with the Nina but came back) Chris would have been amiss. And of course, the Spanish government, King and Queen, bankrolled the venture. Columbus Day should be celebrated as Ferdinand and Isabella (sp) not as Columbus who died in disgrace. Italians should find someone worthy of their veneration. The Italian government gave him the birdie.
Posted by RG, Deicide on October 14, 2007 02:40 PMI wonder how many gringos use Cinco de Mayo as an excuse to hit the bars and get trashed. Likewise non-Irish folk on St. Patrick's Day.
Posted by Hans Christian Brando on October 14, 2007 03:58 PMChristopher Columbus (likely not his given birth name), from Genoa, has been credited with proving the world was round (which was common knowledge to the learned but much larger than he proposed to King Ferdinand II, of Spain), was given a bunch of the malcontened (debtors or prisoners) to help him in his mission (how convenient for Ferdinand II), landed in the West Indies (instead of the East), called the natives "Indians" (to the delight of Isabella), died at least 260 years before this counrty was founded (longer than this country has existed), never set foot on the soil of this country and made some of the biggest blunders the world has ever seen.
The reason we "celebrate Columbus Day" is because a bunch of legislators needed a day off. "Columbus Day" deserves all of the merit of "St. Patricks Day" or "Cinco de Mayo".
Posted by Stan B on October 14, 2007 04:49 PM
Kennewick man. A causcasion found in Kennewick Wa. Predates any American Indian. It proves that the white man-caucasian is the true native in North America.
Cinco de mayo isn't even celebrated in Mexico except in Puebla, Durango Mexico. It's a beer holiday made to sell beer to college kids before they went home for the summer, popularized in the U.S. in the early 90's.
Posted by Kennewick Man on October 14, 2007 05:02 PMKennewick Man proves nothing, except that this person took extraordinary chances. He's 9,000 years old! He doesn't belong to any of us. He was himself. The Northwestern natives can claim him, but he predates any of their cultures. Archaelologlists have a point. What is a caucasian? A white person? Not 9,000 years ago. Kennewick man, if the diagnosis is correct,, was a person who came from Caucasius - in what we now call southern Russia. Was it he what we now call Arab? Gypsy? Jew? None of the above?
After all have gone, you belong to the future.
FTI- I didn't say anything about that. I was talking about Columbus Day in particular, and how what you brought up was irrelevant to the subject on hand. Of course what the Spaniards did was atrocious, but then it's recognized and we aren't "celebrating" it.
Posted by fiesty on October 15, 2007 05:48 AMOctober 14, 2007 10:32 AM -
It's pretty well documented in the correspondence between a Dominican monk (Bartolome de Las Casas ) and the King/Queen Isabella/Ferdinand. As a matter of fact, during one uprising, Columbus packed 1600 Tainos to Spain for use as slaves.
Try googling it- you can hit course syllabi from many universities detailing what happened.
Posted by fiesty on October 15, 2007 05:55 AMStan B. Why have we heard so little, if anything, about Kennewick man? One would have to believe it is a major shifter of paradigms. Don't be scared of the truth.
Posted by Kennewick Man on October 15, 2007 06:05 AMI think everyone who opposes Columbus day should try and make amends to the Indians. Give all your belongings and property to the Indians and move back to Europe. Wait, do that just to the 'nice' Indians, not the ones who had human sacrifices, practiced cannibalism or took slaves from other tribes.
Posted by PokeHerHighness on October 15, 2007 07:08 AMKennewick Man,
Irish legend has it that Brendan the Navigator got here "first". Or was it one of the Vikings - Eric the Red, Lief Ericson, etc.? And, on the west coast, what about the remains of Chinese junks, discovered in the waters off several of the (now) California bays?
And of course, for the followers of Jos. Smith Jr., how about the "Lost 10 Tribes" from the Hebrew mythology book, memorialized in Smith's badly written alternate worlds Science Fiction? Or, for that matter, what about L. Ron Hubbard's gaggle from another galaxy?
The "spread of civilization" - at least as we know it - appears to be from Europe westward. This included a higher degree of technological "sophistication" - i.e., gunpowder and firearms - that enabled the Europeans to conquer, and destroy, several civilizations already long established in the Western Hemisphere.
One of the fundamentals of this expansion can be summed up in the catch-phrase - believed in, and beloved of, even today by Right-wingnuts and "conservatives" - namely and to wit, "To the victor belong the spoils." Add in another cliche: "History is the record of the survivors", and we "celebrate" a good many anomalies.
It takes a bit more than a single - and/or singular - event, or person, to have a "major shift in paradigms", as you suggest. But, it is an interesting "blip on the radar".
Posted by Old Grouch on October 15, 2007 08:40 AMScott, do you mean American Indians? I am also a Native American, white skin and all.
Posted by Ben
Who is from India? Why celebrate ignorance?
Posted by just sayin' on October 15, 2007 09:06 AMWhat does it matter who got "here" first? And why does it matter where Columbus actually landed and under what circumstances?
The "old world" didn't know this land was here. When Columbus stumbled on it trying to get the Orient, folks back home learned it was here.
His only mistake was not getting global consensus before claiming it and then failing to turn occupation over to the United Nations....
Posted by prima facie on October 15, 2007 09:36 AMI sure like pumpkin pie with lots of whipped cream.
Posted by on October 15, 2007 11:04 AMLet's set the record straight once and for all.
The Pilgrims came to America to escape religious persecusion in England. They gave thanks to God for arriving in America to worship as they pleased and had invited their Indian friends who had helped them survive in the new world to sit down to a Thanksgiving meal.
Columbus did not discover America(The United States) but San Salvador and other Caribbean islands. He did it with Spanish money, Ships, crews and the best Spanish Captains Spain had to offer. So why the Italian people here in the US celebrate a day named after him is beyond me. He took the cedit due the Spanish Captains and crews.
He wasn't a murderer but the Spaniards the came later spead the diseases, murdered and enslaved the Indians Indians.
The Conquistadores were the ones who took abusing them to a new level of cruelty. History has taught us that there already was quite a bit of murder and massacring and abuses going on long before Columbus arrived. From the Aztecs,Mayans Incas all the was up into the Black Hills in the Dakotas with the Lakotas and Crow and the east coast Indians killing each other.
Contrary to what Russell Means and the rest of these mooching cry babies living in the past would like you to believe. there's enough blood, blame and guilt to go around on both sides of the Columbus Day debate.
Posted by History 101 on October 15, 2007 12:31 PMI love Native American Indians and
Italian Americans and African Americans,
can't we just get along?
As the saying goes'bury the hachett' all this was generations ago.