Today in the United States, the second Monday of October, is a holiday, but one which is hotly disputed. According to the federal government it is Columbus Day, celebrating the anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas. But to others, especially Native Americans, it is Indigenous People’s Day – celebrating the people who lived in the Americas for centuries beforehand. Rather than “discover” America, as is the popular myth, Columbus merely arrived in what is now the Bahamas, and began over five centuries of genocide against the Indigenous inhabitants. As soon as Columbus landed, he and his crew began enslaving, murdering, torturing and raping the Taíno people who lived there. Travelling to Haiti, Columbus then began forcing the Indigenous people to mine gold, and chopping off the hands of any who did not collect enough. But it was an impossible task as there was almost no gold in the area. In just two years, half of the 250,000 Taínos on Haiti had died: either by murder or suicide in desperation. Within just a few decades, only 500 remained. However, Indigenous people in the Caribbean and elsewhere did resist both Columbus and the other colonisers who came subsequently, and continue to do so today. Indigenous People’s Day celebrates this resistance, and was first proposed in 1977. South Dakota became the first US state to celebrate it in 1990, and every year more states, cities and institutions make the switch from Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day.
Learn more about Indigenous resistance from the US to Chiapas, from Guatemala to Scandinavia in these books: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/all/indigenous https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1552796941572117/?type=3