I recall when I was a boy living in Astoria, Queens, a
day when my father took me to witness the unveiling of a new statue of Christopher
Columbus--the hero that sailed the Ocean Blue and “discovered” America. This
was all I knew about the meaning of the new statue.
I had no idea
that one day I would read a book by David Stannard, American Holocaust (1992), which details the destruction of the
native peoples of the Americas, a destruction whose effects we still witness
today, all of it a sequel of Columbus’s “discovery” of America. And so it has been suggested that we
rename the Columbus “holiday” Indigenous People’s Day.