Our daughter graduated from Berkeley High School. The school didn’t celebrate Columbus Day. The day was called “Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” and lessons stressed the human and environmental catastrophes wreaked on the Americas by the European invasion.
After Columbus’s expedition, Spanish authorities debated the question as to whether the Indians had souls. (It was decided they did). Pilgrims arrived at a largely uninhabited New England; almost all of the natives had already succumbed to European diseases. On the other hand, the Europeans took back tobacco and squash. Historians call all these trades “the Columbian exchange.”
As a descendent of the European invasion, I am happy Columbus did find his way here. I like living in America, even if now and then I feel guilt on Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
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