About Last Week...
Dissonant Holidays
So this did not happen last week, but is happening tomorrow, so close enough.
Over the past few years, many places have ditched Columbus Day for Indigenous People(s) Day (IPD).
The argument is that Columbus – even though he never set foot in North America – is responsible for every possible thing that ever happened wrong to many of the folks who happened to be here before those other people showed up.
The reasoning, if it can be called that, is utterly fallacious – humans have been wandering around the planet willy nilly since Lucy climbed down from her Great Rift Valley Tree and somehow ended up offering inexpensive psychiatric advice in Minnesota.
There is a certain juvenile appeal to the whole “I was here first so it’s mine mine mine forever” schtick. There can even be said to be a bit of truth to it, if one thinks of the concept as similar to town zoning laws that say you cannot build a slaughterhouse next to a low-density housing.
But it carries the catastrophically destructive concept of generational guilt, that because someone a long time ago must have done something bad to my someones a long time ago and you’re the same color as the bad someones, so you owe me, um, money? An apology? Acknowledgement that your multi-billion dollar progressive foundation sits on land my someones walked over a long while ago?
An aside on land acknowledgments, which are things governments and companies and such do to somehow absolve themselves of guilt they do not actually have for having their break room built on an old Indian burial ground or something.
Example, the County of Los Angeles:
The County of Los Angeles recognizes that we occupy land originally and still inhabited and cared for by the Tongva, Tataviam, Serrano, Kizh, and Chumash Peoples. We honor and pay respect to their elders and descendants — past, present, and emerging — as they continue their stewardship of these lands and waters. We acknowledge that settler colonization resulted in land seizure, disease, subjugation, slavery, relocation, broken promises, genocide, and multigenerational trauma. This acknowledgment demonstrates our responsibility and commitment to truth, healing, and reconciliation and to elevating the stories, culture, and community of the original inhabitants of Los Angeles County. We are grateful to have the opportunity to live and work on these ancestral lands.
And here’s the University of Rhode Island’s:
The University of Rhode Island occupies the traditional stomping ground of the Narragansett Nation and the Niantic People. We honor and respect the enduring and continuing relationship between the Indigenous people and this land by teaching and learning more about their history and present-day communities, and by becoming stewards of the land we, too, inhabit.
Stomping ground? Seems rather informal, if not a bit insulting.
But the point is that unless an organization is willing to GIVE BACK THE LAND it got through “disease, subjugation, slavery, relocation, broken promises, genocide,” then the acknowledgment is not only hollow but viciously so.
Yeah, we stole it, sorry ‘bout that, but no, you can’t have it back. Next, item 34 on the agenda…
Which brings us back to IPD/Columbus Day.
Some places have ditched the Columbus bit permanently, some have yet to bend the woke knee to have an IPD, but some have tried to have it both ways.
Going back to Rhode Island, Monday there is “Indigenous Peoples Day/Columbus Day.”
So, if you believe Columbus was an evil oppressor, why then you would have his holiday on the same day as the people he oppressed?
Isn’t that like saying “Heil Hanukah”?
That is actually a glimmer of hope, in an odd way, if one is worried about a permanently woke world – they only focus on the symbolic rather than the actual and even then they keep screwing that up.
This week’s anagram is a quote from “The Thick of It,” a very funny, very accurate, very sweary look inside British government (think a blue “Yes, Minister,” or “Veep” with an accent.)
A government minister is forced to go out amongst the regular people for some workplace tour and it does not go well, causing him to pull his assistant aside and ask:
“Why are they all so fat? And why do they all wear clothes with words on them?”
If you have ever wondered exactly what the powers that be think of, you that’s it in a nutshell.
Both Yes, Minister and The Thick of It can be found on Amazon Prime, though you may need an add-on subscription.
Speaking of which – thanks for subscribing!