"Pursuant to two congressional resolutions, President Barack Obama proclaimed Monday October 8, 2012 as Columbus Day. “I call upon the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies and activities,” he stated.

Out of the 449 words of his proclamation, President Obama devoted only 14 to the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the subsequent centuries of history that resulted from the four voyages of Columbus (aka Cristobal Colόn, “Christ-bearer Colonizer”). When we strip away the extraneous words, only five of them speak specifically to that history: “tragic burdens tribal communities bore.”

The book American Holocaust was published by David Stannard in 1992, during the quincentennial commemoration of Columbus’s first historic voyage. In the Introduction, Stannard states: “From almost the instant of first human contact between Europe and the Americas firestorms of microbial pestilence and purposeful genocide began laying waste the American natives.”"

Get the Story:
Steven Newcomb: On President Obama’s Columbus Day Proclamation (Indian Country Today 10/14)

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