It’s time to fully embrace Indigenous Peoples’ Day in NE Ohio and accept the brutal truth about Christopher Columbus: Nancy Kelsey

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Indigenous Peoples’ Day is Oct. 9.

You may not notice anything special denoting this in local cities around Northeast Ohio, because so few have recognized the day, opting to keep observing it as Columbus Day. In fact, Oberlin and Akron are among the only cities in our area observing Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead of a celebration of a genocidal colonizer.

In Columbus, the largest city bearing the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus’s name, they too will observe Indigenous Peoples Day. Some cities have gone the route of observing the day as both Indigenous Peoples’ Day and Columbus Day.

But this really misses the mark of what Indigenous Peoples’ Day is supposed to represent. Changing the name to Indigenous Peoples’ Day is both a recognition of the first peoples of this land and a step toward righting the historic wrong of celebrating the embodiment of the eradication of Indigenous peoples, culture, rights, lands and more. It should be an opportunity for Indigenous peoples to reclaim and decolonize this long-held holiday.

So many in Northeast Ohio are hypocrites in their views. They vehemently argue that Chief Wahoo and other supposedly Native-inspired mascots are intended to honor Native people. Meanwhile, they dishonor us by failing to support the recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Anyone truly interested in honoring Indigenous peoples should be quick to embrace the change, especially because it has the blessing of so many Indigenous peoples, who view it as progress. The Venn diagram here should really be a circle.

But we know it is not. It would be naive to assume their defense of Wahoo is rooted in honoring Indigenous peoples. Instead, their arguments are dog whistles for white supremacists, who irrationally believe that Indigenous Peoples’ Day is just another way for the “radical left” to erode their rights.

Some might say this change is an affront to Italian Americans. But this, too, is misguided.

The date itself has been observed nationally as Columbus Day, not Italian American Heritage Day — the latter of which would have made a whole lot more sense as a way to celebrate the beauty of the diaspora of Italian culture.

There is no honor to the Italian people in staunchly defending Columbus Day. What, in fact, are we celebrating?

One of my favorite books, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, recounts this of Columbus’s landing on what is now known as Hispaniola, as written by Spanish priest Bartolome de Las Casas:

“When he arrived on Hispaniola in 1508, Las Casas says, ‘there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it.’”

Zinn goes on to write that the number itself is unverifiable and could even be more than double. Even so, he writes, this is the part of Columbus’s legacy that Americans do not want to confront.

Las Casas’ words echo in my mind, because they so clearly hold true today — “Who in future generations will believe this?”

After centuries of countless scholars’ analyses and commentaries on the atrocities of Christopher Columbus in the name of God and the church – with which I will forever struggle to reconcile, as someone who was raised Catholic — there are still those who would sweep this important history under the rug or, worse, justify it.

I recall when the city of Cleveland in 2019 considered changing the holiday to Indigenous Peoples Day. There were those who said truly heinous things in defense of Columbus Day, rationalizing his role in the slaughter of Indigenous peoples.

Some said it was unfair to judge Columbus’ actions as an explorer and mass murderer by today’s norms of morality.

I wonder if they would say the same about the evils of other genocidal figures in history, like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin or Pol Pot? Not likely, because of the ire they would likely draw from the public.

This position has always astounded me. Especially since there are so many notable Italians and Italian Americans, whose contributions have made the world a better place. Why not honor any one of them who hasn’t killed people en masse, or create a new Italian American Heritage Day to honor the collective contributions of this wondrous culture?

I hope Cleveland and its surrounding communities eventually follow the lead of Columbus, Cincinnati, Akron and other Ohio cities that have made this change. We owe it to future generations of Clevelanders to right this wrong immediately.

A Clevelander from the Slavic Village neighborhood, Nancy Kelsey started her career in journalism before working in communications. Her biggest loves are her husband, family, dogs, volunteering, traveling, writing, learning about other cultures and sharing her own. You can reach her at nancy.kelseyPD@yahoo.com.

Nancy Kelsey columnist for cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. January 14, 2022