Columbus Day in 2007?

On October 8, 2007 the country celebrated Columbus Day. Granted I do always appreciate a day off from work, I nonetheless felt uncomfortable acknowledging this particular federal holiday. Call me crazy but a holiday celebrating a man for “discovering” land that had been inhabited by millions of people is demented. I really do not understand how, in the year 2007, we can justify this holiday. The world knows that Columbus did not truly discover America or Hispaniola for that matter. Why then are we celebrating this fallacy? It’s as if through the celebration of Columbus Day, America wipes its slate clean and erases from history the mass genocide committed against the people this land was stolen from.

I, of course, have no qualms with having a federally mandated holiday that will allot me a day off from my normal routine. In fact, I say, we keep the day off. I believe it would instead be more appropriate to rename the holiday as Indigenous People Day. The least the U.S. can do is pay tribute to the peoples, whose lives were largely eradicated for the founding of this nation, through a day of recognition.

If we’re going to celebrate, we should do so with dignity.