Indigenous Resistance Day

Christopher Columbus arrived in the Bahamas 528 years ago this week, beginning a process of colonization and genocide against Native people, which represents one of the darkest chapters in the history of this continent, that  unleashed unimaginable brutality against the indigenous people of this continent.that killed tens of millions of Native people across the hemisphere. From the very beginning, Columbus was not on a mission of discovery but of conquest and exploitation—he called his expedition la empresa, the enterprise. 

Columbus deserves to be remembered as the first terrorist in the Americas. When resistance mounted to the Spaniards’ violence, Columbus sent an armed force to “spread terror among the Indians to show them how strong and powerful the Christians were,” according to the Spanish priest Bartolomé de las Casas. In his book Conquest of Paradise, Kirkpatrick Sale describes what happened when Columbus’s men encountered a force of Taínos in March of 1495 in a valley on the island of Hispañiola: " The soldiers mowed down dozens with point-blank volleys, loosed the dogs to rip open limbs and bellies, chased fleeing Indians into the bush to skewer them on sword and pike, and [according to Columbus’s biographer, his son Fernando] “with God’s aid soon gained a complete victory, killing many Indians and capturing others who were also killed.”

All this and much more has long been known and documented. As early as 1942 in his Pulitzer Prize winning biography, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Samuel Eliot Morison wrote that Columbus’s policies in the Caribbean led to “complete genocide”—and Morison was a writer who admired Columbus.

Many countries are now  acknowledging this devastating history by rejecting the federal holiday of Columbus Day which  is marked on October 12  and celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead to honor centuries of indigenous resistance.If Indigenous peoples’ lives mattered in our society, and if Black people’s lives mattered in our society, it would be inconceivable that we would honor the father of the slave trade with a national holiday. Let alone allow our history books to laud Columus as some kind of hero. For oppressed people this day is a constant reminder that many of their ancestors and their suffering simply did not matter. As a result many countries in the Americas  now celebrate October 12 as Día de la Raza and many indigenous peoples and other progressive people celebrate it as Indigenous People's Day or Indigenous Resistance Day. Because this  so-called “discovery” of the America caused the worst demographic catastrophe of human history, with around 95 percent of the indigenous population annihilated in the first 130 years of colonization, without mentioning the victims from the African continent, with about 60 million people sent to the Americas as slaves, with only 12 percent of them arriving alive.Therefore, Native American groups consider Columbus a European colonizer responsible for the genocide of millions of indigenous people. Not an individual worthy of celebration  because he helped contribute  to the Europeans Colonization of the Americas which resulted in  slavery, killings, and other atrocities against the native Americans
As a counter to official celebrations of "Columbus Day"  with indigenous people increasingly demanding their rights, in 1992 the United Nations declared October 12 as the International Day of Indigenous Peoples, ruining thereby the determination of Spain and other countries to call it International Day of America's Discovery, this was then followed  by Venezuela which was the first country of the region to grant the demand under Hugo Chavez's administration, accepting their suggestion of “Day of Indigenous Resistance” in 2002. Chavez described the previous name “Day of Race” chosen by then President of Venezuela, Juan Vicente Gomez in 1921, as “discriminatory, racist and pejorative.”​
Nicaragua and Daniel Ortega´s Sandinista government  has been the only country going as far as Venezuela until now, also choosing the name “Day of Indigenous Resistance” in 2007.
With several exceptions, such as the conservative governments of Paraguay, Colombia and Honduras, for instance, many other countries of the continent have nevertheless changed the infamous name “Day of Race.”
It became the “Day of Respect for Cultural Diversity” in Argentina, after the failure of a legislative project in 2004 to change it to “Day of Resistance of Indigenous Peoples.” Argentina has more than 1,600 indigenous communities, and over a million Argentinian people who claim their indigenous identity according to the National Institution of Indigenous People.Yet the indigenous communities of Argentina organize counter-marches to protest against this name, recalling the damages caused by the conqueror Julio Argentino Roca to their ancestral lands at the end of the 19th century.
In Chile as well, where the Mapuche community are still fighting to claim their native lands in the fertile south of the country, the day was renamed even more weakly, “Day of the Encounter Between the Two Worlds” in 2000.
In Ecuador, President Rafael Correa changed the name to “Day of Inter-culturality and Pluri-nationality” in 2011. That same year in Bolivia, President Evo Morales, the first indigenous leader in South America, changed it to "Day of Mourning for the Misery, Diseases and Hunger Brought by the European Invasion of America." The diseases were indeed the main cause of the indigenous genocide, as the invaders brought viruses and bacterias the indigenous peoples were not immune to.
In El Salvador, social and indigenous organizations presented a legislative project before the parliament, for which the congresspeople of the governing Farabundo Marti Front (FMLN) expressed their support. In June 2014, the congress finally approved a constitutional reform recognizing the existence of indigenous peoples in the country. In 2016, Salvadorean and Uruguayan indigenous peoples began demanding a name change of their governments. The Charrua community of Uruguay for instance has made the demand since 2010, but has faced strong opposition by conservative sectors. In 2014, the National Assembly approved a legislative project, but only changed the name to “Day of Cultural Diversity.” The ruling party Broad Front (Frente Amplio) had pushed for the same name as in Venezuela and Nicaragua, but the legislative commission then chose to modify it.

Indigenous peoples in Latin America account for about 13 percent of the total population – about 40 million, with around 670 different nations or communities, according to the CEPAL. Most of them are in Mexico, Guatemala, and Andean countries. They all face some level of racism, discrimination and poverty, suffering more than the rest of the population from an unequal access to resources like employment, health and education services, but also deprived of their ancestral lands and natural resources – about 40 percent of rural populations are indigenous, according to the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs.https://www.iwgia.org/en/ 

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States, Indigenous people have experienced some of the highest mortality rates in the county. High rates of diabetes, obesity and other poverty-related health problems make Native Americans more vulnerable to the virus than other populations. 

The Navajo Nation, which spreads across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, has been one of the hardest hit locations .Due to pollution caused by mining and lack of basic infrastructure, about 40 perceent of those who live on the Navajo Nation lack access to drinking water and haul water or rely on water trucks. This lack of clean, running water makes it nearly impossible for Navajo people to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance to constantly wash their hands and surfaces.  

In Mississippi, rates of COVID are 10 times higher among the Mississippi  Choctaw, the only federally recognized Native nation in the state, than among the rest of Mississippi’s population. So far, more than 1,000 people or more than 10 percent of all Mississippi Choctaws have contracted coronavirus, and many have lost multiple family members. 

Exacerbating the crises within Indigenous communities across North America, the Trump administration’s border wall and immigration policies have caused further devastation to many Native communities. Thousands of migrants, including many who are from Indigenous communities within Central America, have been exposed to the virus in U.S. detention centers. By housing migrants in these dense holding centers—without proper medical care, sanitation or personal protective equipment, and then deporting them—U.S. immigration practices have exported  the virus to Indigenous communities across Guatemala and Mexico.  

The border wall and these immigration policies have brought further violence and risk of exposure to Native nations whose homelands straddle the U.S.-Mexico border. Native nations like the Kumeyaay in California and the Tohono O’odham, whose lands stretch between Arizona and the Mexican state of Sonora, have fought for years against the construction of Trump’s border wall through their lands. Within the last month, multiple Kumeyaay and Tohono O’odham demonstrators have been arrested   and forcibly removed from their own homelands as they attempted to halt construction of the wall and protect their sacred lands.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States,” writes, “By and large the history of relations between Indigenous and settler is fraught with conflict, defined by a struggle for land, which is inevitably a struggle for power and control. Five hundred years later, Native peoples are still fighting to protect their lands and their rights to exist as distinct political communities and individuals.”

Because  of historical traumas inflicted on indigenous peoples that include land dispossession, death of the majority of the populations through warfare and disease, forced removal and relocation, assimilative boarding school experiences, and prohibiting religious practices, among others, indigenous peoples have experienced historical losses, which include the loss of land, traditional and spiritual ways, self-respect from poor treatment from government officials, language, family ties, trust from broken treaties, culture, and people (through early death); there are also losses that can be attributed to increased alcoholism.  These losses have been associated with sadness and depression, anger, intrusive thoughts, discomfort, shame, fear, and distrust around white people   Experiencing massive traumas and losses is thought to lead to cumulative and unresolved grief, which can result in the historical trauma response, which includes suicidal thoughts and acts, IPV, depression, alcoholism, self-destructive behavior, low self-esteem, anxiety, anger, and lowered emotional expression and recognition .These symptoms run parallel to the extant health disparities that are documented among indigenous peoples.

Today is about acknowledging all this whilst  honoring the rich history of resistance that Native communities across the world  have contributed to and  it is  also about sharing  a deep commitment to intergenerational justice. Celebrating Indigenous People’s Day is a step towards recognizing that colonization still exists. We can do more to end that colonization and respect the sovereignty of indigenous nations.  .May we spend this day, and all days, honoring Native Peoples’ commitment to making the world a better place for all. Reflect on their ancestral past , the ongoing struggles of indigenous peoples in protecting their lands and freedoms,celebrate their sacrifices and celebrate life whilst.recognizing the people, traditions and cultures that were wiped out because of Columbus’ colonization and acknowledge the. bloodshed and elimination of those that were massacred.Transforming this day into a celebration of indigenous people and a celebration of social justice  allows us to make a connection between this painful history and the ongoing marginalization, discrimination and poverty that indigenous communities face to this day.