Morning Clouds, #1, Tucson, Arizona, 2018
I guess they do still celebrate Columbus Day in many countries around the world (Latin America, Spain, primarily) and, yes, they still even call it the “Day of the Race”, referring to the Hispanic Race that “discovered” America back in 1492.
Wow.
I’m sure Native Americans would have a different take on the whole thing–and indeed they do.
To “celebrate” this Day of First American-European Contact (a neutral term?), hows about we check in with the old man o’ the sea himself, Mr. Chris Columbus?
A famous quote from his own diary:
“The Indians are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone. They would make fine servants…With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”
What if, instead of living today with the same material mindset as Columbus clearly evoked in that excerpt…what if, instead, we lived today in a society based on even 10% of the mindset of those naive “Indians”?
Leave a reply