Columbus Day: No Cause for Celebration 

I'm proud South Dakota does not honour the originator
of the Native American genocide, but not that we're
alone in the union 

by Dana Lone Hill

Published on Monday, October 8, 2012 
by The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/08/columbus-day-no-cause-for-celebration

An illustration of Christopher Columbus arriving in the
New World from circa 1900. (Photograph: Corbis)All
across America on Monday, people will be celebrating
Columbus Day. I don't know what that means exactly,
except usually there's a white sale where you can buy
your sheets at 20% off. Supposedly, though, there may
be parades, people get time off from work, school, etc.
According to Wikipedia, "Columbus Day first became an
official state holiday in Colorado in 1906, and became
a federal holiday in 1937, though people have
celebrated Columbus' voyage since the colonial period."

I personally don't know anyone who "celebrates"
Columbus Day. I know plenty of people who protest
Columbus Day.

In other states, that is. See, 22 years ago here in
South Dakota, Republican Governor George Mickelson
replaced Columbus Day with Native American Day. That
makes this the only state that honors the indigenous
people of this land, rather than honor the beginning of
their attempted genocide. Mickelson proclaimed 1990 as
a "Year of Reconciliation" and changed the holiday the
same year, with the help of the state legislature. It
was supposed to be the beginning of a long road to
improve racial relations in the state that has a
tormented history on that score.

A statue of Christopher Columbus pulled down by
protesters in Caracas, Venezuela, 2004, where Columbus
Day is marked as 'Indigenous Resistance Day'.
(Photograph: Luis Noguera/AP)

I always felt proud that our state didn't honor someone
who murdered, enslaved, and raped indigenous people.
Considering that it was the beginning of a genocide,
this would be like putting a day aside to honor the
memory of Hitler and selling sheets at a discount for
the role he played in the world. Mickelson's initiative
made me feel like we were a little ahead of the rest of
the country: this is the same state that remembers the
Wounded Knee Massacre, the Occupation of Wounded Knee,
and unsolved deaths of our people in the 1973 incident.
So, we celebrated Native American Day, not Columbus
Day.

Yet, as Lakota people, we have all experienced racism
in the state of South Dakota. Every single one of us,
many times. My first time was when I was six years old
and moving off the reservation. I was called horrible
names, but I survived. And that was only the beginning.

I recall another time, when I was 18: my family moved
to the nearest city off our reservation. It was a real
nice, historic neighborhood; my stepfather was a
lawyer. We received an anonymous letter in the mail
calling us names and telling us to move back to the
reservation. I took the letter and went knocking on
doors trying to find out who'd sent it. Of course, no
one admitted it; I went home mad and in tears. The next
day, neighbors brought us casseroles, cookies, and
fudge. But when they left, my mother wouldn't let us
eat the food: she was paranoid that the food might get
us sick (if one of the givers was the one who had sent
the letter).

That wasn't to say the fudge and cookies didn't
disappear mysteriously, though. Too many kids in the
house.

So, 22 years after Governor Mickelson's proclamation of
"the year of reconciliation", have the race relations
in this state improved? We all like to think they did.
But then, it's hard to ignore an incident like the one
that occurred a few weeks ago, at the South Dakota
State University, where Native American students from
in-state reservations were subjected to graffiti in a
dormitory bathroom that read "Praire [sic] niggers, go
back to the rez" (listing specific students' room
numbers).

This was the same insult I'd read in that anonymous
letter sent to my family when I was 18. This recent
incident has not stopped the Native American students
from attending the university, and it is being
investigated as a hate crime. But it shows that some of
our citizens clearly still have a long way to go in
learning to accept the people who lived here before
them.

Our hope is that we all learn from this - and remember
Governor Mickelson, who made that huge first step, and
who died, aged 52, in a place crash in 1993. One day,
we hope, the rest of the states of the union will join
South Dakota in not honoring the memory of a murderer.
(c) 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited Dana Lone Hill

Dana Lone Hill is an enrolled member of the Oglala
Lakota Sioux tribe from the Pine Ridge Reservation. She
currently lives in the city of Sioux Falls, with two of
her four children. She works in a full-time blue-collar
job, part-time as an artist, all the time as a
freelance writer

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