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[Ed note: In observance of the US federal holiday which is observed on Monday October 11, 2021, I am inviting the editorial staff to run stories on a weekend schedule tomorrow. Please join me in thanking them for all their hard work and for the sacrifice of their spare time and energy! --martyb.]
Biden becomes first president to issue proclamation marking Indigenous Peoples' Day:
President Joe Biden issued a proclamation commemorating Indigenous Peoples' Day on Friday, becoming the first US president to do so, the White House said.
"The contributions that Indigenous peoples have made throughout history — in public service, entrepreneurship, scholarship, the arts, and countless other fields — are integral to our Nation, our culture, and our society," Biden wrote in the proclamation Friday. "Today, we acknowledge the significant sacrifices made by Native peoples to this country — and recognize their many ongoing contributions to our Nation."
Biden also marked a change of course from previous administrations in his proclamation marking Columbus Day, which honors the explorer Christopher Columbus. In that proclamation, the President acknowledged the death and destruction wrought on native communities after Columbus journeyed to North America in the late 1500s, ushering in an age of European exploration of the Western Hemisphere.
"Today, we also acknowledge the painful history of wrongs and atrocities that many European explorers inflicted on Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities. It is a measure of our greatness as a Nation that we do not seek to bury these shameful episodes of our past — that we face them honestly, we bring them to the light, and we do all we can to address them," Biden wrote.
More than 100 cities -- including Seattle, Los Angeles, Denver, Phoenix, San Francisco -- and a number of states -- including Minnesota, Alaska, Vermont and Oregon -- have replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day, choosing instead to recognize the native populations that were displaced and decimated after Columbus and other European explorers reached the continent. Berkeley, California, was the first city to adopt Indigenous Peoples' Day, in 1992.
Also at Al Jazeera.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 12 2021, @03:28PM
No, it wasn't normal, as evidenced by contemporary reactions to it.
There were numerous very intentional efforts to kill off or expel from a territory large groups of people based on ethnicity. Many cultures that once existed in the Americas no longer do, in large part because of that effort. If that's not genocide, neither is the Holocaust.
And I did not claim the people Columbus exterminated were angels. They were people, some holding political power.
And yes, disease absolutely played a role. And while the people of the 1500's and 1600's didn't know germ theory, they did notice that if they gave blankets to the Natives that had been used by people dying of smallpox, those Natives that used them died of smallpox, so they did quite a bit of that sort of thing as a very primitive form of biological warfare.
In addition to disease, Spanish policy, and later English policy, and later US and Canadian policy all played a role. About the only ones who can't be blamed too much were the French, who were more about trading with the people already in North America rather than taking their stuff, enslaving them, or killing them. And I don't consider it an accident that by the 1700's, most of the native peoples were allied with the French, not the English colonies.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.