Michael Graham explains in a Federalist column why a plan to replace Columbus Day makes little sense.
Los Angeles and Austin, Texas have now joined the list of liberal-run cities that have eradicated Columbus Day from their calendars and replaced it with “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.” In LA, the desire to dis the European discoverer was so strong that they rejected a compromise proposal to keep Columbus Day and add “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” elsewhere.
“We need to dismantle a state-sponsored celebration of genocide of indigenous peoples,” said Chrissie Castro of the LA Native American Indian Commission. “To make us celebrate on any other day would be further injustice.”
Most Americans don’t agree. A new Marist poll finds 56 percent of Americans admire Columbus and support Columbus Day. They reject the idea that it’s a holiday about slaughter and enslavement. However, if we really want to commemorate horrifying, unspeakable violence and oppression in the Americas, I’ve got the perfect holiday: “Indigenous People’s Day.”
“Long before the white European knew a North American continent existed, Indians of the Northern Plains were massacring entire villages,” says George Franklin Feldman in the book “Cannibalism, Headhunting and Human Sacrifice in North America: A History Forgotten.” “And not just killed, but mutilated. Hands and feet were cut off, each body’s head was scalped, the remains were left scattered around the village, which was burned.”
