How is it that in October 2007, we once again mark Columbus Day? Why, 515 years after he discovered himself in the Americas, do government offices close, banks take a holiday, major retailers hold sales and numerous communities stage parades? These questions do not have easy answers, but do force us to confront some rather uncomfortable truths. It requires setting aside what our educational system and popular media have taught us about Christopher Columbus. In studying his journals, accounts of his contemporaries and historical analyses, it becomes clear the ambitious and intrepid explorer neither discovered America, nor brought civilization to the savages. Instead – even though lost – he displayed great arrogance upon encountering numerous diverse and sophisticated native nations, believing them to be less than human.

His achievements in the Caribbean include enslaving and plundering; implementing punitive policies that included cutting off the hands of those who did not bring his invading force enough gold; allowing, if not encouraging, massacres; the destruction of families and communities and a cavalier blood sport in which his soldiers would routinely laid wagers on whether they could manage to slice a man in two at a stroke, or cut an individual’s head from his body with a single blow of their axes. Eyewitness accounts estimate more than 5 million people were exterminated within the first three years of his arrival.

Although we may want stop short of naming Columbus a terrorist or comparing him to Hitler as some are wont to do, I find it hard to believe we celebrate a holiday each October to honor the man, his character or his accomplishments. Rather, the holiday allows the telling of stories about the founding of America. One thing that makes these stores about Columbus so powerful is that they serve as an origin myth, which encourage Americans to remember a heroic past devoid of conflict, pain and power. The celebrations and stories constituting this collective memory of when and how the nation came to be erase much of what actually happened, excluding from view uneasy experiences and untidy complexities shaping the emergence and evolution of the United States. Enshrining Columbus not only gives the American experience a meaningful beginning, but more importantly denies the genocidal and imperial acts that were to follow as Europeans sought to exploit resources and extended their hegemony.

Columbus Day allows Americans to forget the past and to deny its implications for the present. Moreover, miseducation has caused many Americans not to recognize American Indians, their perspectives and their lasting presence, leaving them without empathy for or awareness of the joys and struggles of Native Americans.

Perhaps Americans continue to celebrate Columbus Day because they do not know better and have been encouraged not to remember or feel the pain and violence at the heart of the American experience. I fear that forgetting is just another expression of the anti-Indianism initiated with Columbus’ arrival. Those of us teaching and learning at a land grant institution on native land have a special obligation to never forget. We have a responsibility to find ways to bring more American Indian students, staff and faculty to WSU, and with them indigenous ways of knowing and being. Increased offerings in indigenous studies would be one path toward this end, another would be to increase the funding and prominence of The Plateau Center for American Indian Studies. Small steps to be sure, but essential efforts if we are to come to terms with Columbus, empire and injustice, and open spaces for reconciliation and understanding.