summercomfort (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
summercomfort) wrote2013-10-14 08:47 pm
summercomfort) wrote2013-10-14 08:47 pm
Columbus Day
So today is apparently Columbus Day in the US. I barely noticed, since it's a regular school day for me. But then I read the oatmeal ... infographic? Not sure I can call it a comic strip. ( http://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day ). While I appreciated the effort to tell some of the truth behind Christopher Columbus, I took some issue:
1) Columbus is cast as evil incarnate, when in fact he is just a deeply flawed human, just like the rest of us -- his pursuit of wealth and glory, his lack of empathy for a wholly different people, as well as European institutions at the time, made him do some horrible, horrible things. But he was not alone in this -- in fact, he *couldn't* have done it alone. Likewise, Bartolomé was no saint, either -- equally flawed, equally human.
2) The infographic remained Euro-centric. Why should we replace celebration of one European with another? Why not present something from the Indian perspective? Why is it always about the white guy doing things to the natives, and never about what the natives themselves were doing? This is why I like the idea of celebrating it as Indigenous Peoples Day. This is our chance to celebrate the complexities and achievements of the Indian societies and civilizations that Columbus and others like him encountered. (The Mesoamerican bioengineering of corn, the Mayan Long Count, the Iroquois Confederacy, the Inca mummy kings are all within easy wikipedia). Everyone was pretty busy with their own lives when the Europeans showed up -- busy with their own lives and their own politics -- busy being human.
This is also our chance to commemorate the Columbian Exchange. It wasn't a discovery and it wasn't a New World, but that moment still remains worthy of recognition. Without the Columbian Exchange I wouldn't be here. Italian food wouldn't have tomatoes, Jack-o-lanterns would still be made of turnips, and the Lakota wouldn't be riding horses. Europe wouldn't have become a nexus of trade, and Latin America wouldn't be speaking Spanish.
That said, it's one thing to say "let's celebrate indigenous peoples!" but it's another thing to actually do it -- our school curriculum is still woefully thin on actual indigenous history, and most of it is presented from the European perspective of "we did things to them". So I wanted to doodle up a quick comic about something from the native perspective that I learned while drawing Tisquantum. At first I was thinking about explaining how European beads tanked the local currency, but that's a bit depressing, so instead, a little snippet about Massachusett gender roles!
I got this from Indian New England 1524-1674, pgs 56-62, specifically the following accounts by Edward Winslow who was in Plymouth in 1623:
"The women live a most slavish life; they carry all their burdens, set and dress their corn, gather it in, seek out for much of their food, beat and make ready the corn to eat, and have all household care lying upon them. [...] When a maid is taken in marriage, she first cutteth her hair and after weareth a covering on her head till her hair be grown out. Their women are diversely disposed; some as modest, as they will scarce talk one with another in the company of men, being very chaste also; yet other some light, lascivious, and wanton. If a woman have a bad husband, or cannot affect him, and there be war or opposition between that and any other people, she will run away from him to the contrary party and there live, where they never come unwelcome, for where are most women there is greatest plenty."
1) Columbus is cast as evil incarnate, when in fact he is just a deeply flawed human, just like the rest of us -- his pursuit of wealth and glory, his lack of empathy for a wholly different people, as well as European institutions at the time, made him do some horrible, horrible things. But he was not alone in this -- in fact, he *couldn't* have done it alone. Likewise, Bartolomé was no saint, either -- equally flawed, equally human.
2) The infographic remained Euro-centric. Why should we replace celebration of one European with another? Why not present something from the Indian perspective? Why is it always about the white guy doing things to the natives, and never about what the natives themselves were doing? This is why I like the idea of celebrating it as Indigenous Peoples Day. This is our chance to celebrate the complexities and achievements of the Indian societies and civilizations that Columbus and others like him encountered. (The Mesoamerican bioengineering of corn, the Mayan Long Count, the Iroquois Confederacy, the Inca mummy kings are all within easy wikipedia). Everyone was pretty busy with their own lives when the Europeans showed up -- busy with their own lives and their own politics -- busy being human.
This is also our chance to commemorate the Columbian Exchange. It wasn't a discovery and it wasn't a New World, but that moment still remains worthy of recognition. Without the Columbian Exchange I wouldn't be here. Italian food wouldn't have tomatoes, Jack-o-lanterns would still be made of turnips, and the Lakota wouldn't be riding horses. Europe wouldn't have become a nexus of trade, and Latin America wouldn't be speaking Spanish.
That said, it's one thing to say "let's celebrate indigenous peoples!" but it's another thing to actually do it -- our school curriculum is still woefully thin on actual indigenous history, and most of it is presented from the European perspective of "we did things to them". So I wanted to doodle up a quick comic about something from the native perspective that I learned while drawing Tisquantum. At first I was thinking about explaining how European beads tanked the local currency, but that's a bit depressing, so instead, a little snippet about Massachusett gender roles!
I got this from Indian New England 1524-1674, pgs 56-62, specifically the following accounts by Edward Winslow who was in Plymouth in 1623:
"The women live a most slavish life; they carry all their burdens, set and dress their corn, gather it in, seek out for much of their food, beat and make ready the corn to eat, and have all household care lying upon them. [...] When a maid is taken in marriage, she first cutteth her hair and after weareth a covering on her head till her hair be grown out. Their women are diversely disposed; some as modest, as they will scarce talk one with another in the company of men, being very chaste also; yet other some light, lascivious, and wanton. If a woman have a bad husband, or cannot affect him, and there be war or opposition between that and any other people, she will run away from him to the contrary party and there live, where they never come unwelcome, for where are most women there is greatest plenty."
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Eh... I'm kinda ambivalent about Columbia -- I feel like that's erasing the issue instead of addressing it head-on, and no one really cares about Columbia anymore. At least as it stands right now, once a year we get to talk about the issues around the "discovery" and the Native American world that was lost.
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