nd now we come to another Columbus Day, and with it the usual Italian-American parades and Native American protests. Things were no different last year in Syracuse, N.Y., which dutifully featured both. But Syracusans did seem pleased when a pretty young lady of Vietnamese descent, Myphuong Phan, was crowned the city’s Miss Columbus Day 2005, According to Syracuse’s Post-Standard, the committee that selected Phan for the honor did it because “Columbus discovered America for everyone.”
Christopher Columbus: he’s not just for Italians anymore! Many Americans would doubtless applaud this multicultural twist on Columbus, and some might even conclude that it lent an additional meaning to the day’s festivities: namely, another welcomed step away from that grisly legacy known as the Vietnam War. Surely, if Columbus discovered America for Phan as much as anyone else, there’s a bit less incentive to concern ourselves with nagging unpleasantries like napalm or My Lai.
Of course, that wouldn’t change the fact that the Vietnam War was waged in precisely the same imperialist spirit that Columbus represents, whether we call it stopping the spread of communism, opening up new markets, or discovering the New World. In the cases of both Vietnam and the Americas – and here we can quietly mention Iraq as well – the sovereignty, intelligence and humanity of people who inhabited invaded lands was considered a moot point by “liberators” who presumed to know best and acted accordingly. In such cases, you can be certain that the deaths of Natives will always exceed those of the invaders, and Native life will inevitably be more difficult in the aftermath.
So despite its good intentions, I’m not feeling uplifted by the prospects of a multicultural Columbus Day – no matter how much I support efforts by the Vietnamese-American community to become more accepted in their new country (and I do appreciate that impulse). While I heartily applaud the idea of America being open to all human beings – from Italians to Vietnamese to Mexicans (yes, Mexicans) – Columbus Day is the wrong vehicle for that otherwise noble message of inclusion.
I just don’t believe Columbus is a recoverable symbol.
Columbus Day is an act of public memory, a “commemoration,” which my dictionary defines as a “ceremony to honor the memory of someone or something.” It’s a ceremony. That means commemoration has something powerful built into it, a creative force that changes the world, or at least the people doing the ceremony. Just as the ceremony of marriage creates a family, or the ceremony of bar mitzvah creates a man, the ceremony of commemoration is similarly intended to create something new that didn’t exist before.
What do commemorations create? The identity of a people.
Like other national commemorations, Columbus Day compels Americans to remember their past and reflect upon how it led to their present. But commemorations don’t stop with mere reflections on the past; if they did, we would just call them “history.” Commemorations are different because they further compel us to identify with what we remember, deeply and emotionally, and hence see ourselves possessing a common identity with others who feel the same way we do. In this heartfelt way, we are transformed into a people – an “us” – whose identity is in large part the result of remembered folks and deeds.
Of key importance to this process of identity-making is the presence of values. That is, the identity formed through the act of remembering is inseparable from the values drawn from historical example. For instance, each Fourth of July Americans assemble to reflect on the independence gained through an act of rebellion waged in the name of democracy, liberty and equality: values that are then firmly linked to American identity. Public memory creates a common identity defined in large measure through this reverent acquisition of values – they’re absolutely crucial.
With this creative, ceremonial power in view, our troubled age seems as good a time as any to ask some critical questions of this annual commemoration of Columbus – to ask, that is, what does Columbus Day seek to do? What kind of identity are we trying to create for ourselves by celebrating this man? What values do we deem so important from the example of his life and career that we would wish them for our own?
It seems to me that the identity created through Columbus’s commemoration is not “American” so much as “imperialist.” Columbus was obviously not an American but a slave-trading explorer who saw non-Europeans as lesser beings given over to people like him for exploitation by the grace of a God who clearly takes sides. Is that really how Americans want to see themselves? Do any decent people want to be imperialists? Do you?
As for values, to which ideals is a Columbian imperialist identity linked? Discovery – even though “discovered” lands always seem to be occupied? White supremacy – by virtue of an idea called “civilization” that decreed all non-whites to be “savages”? Slavery? Land theft? Genocide? Indeed, one might observe that these Columbian imperialist values are diametrically opposed to the more Jeffersonian American values of democracy, liberty and equality.
Clearly there is a lot more at stake in these national commemorations than just picnics and parades. So rather than make Columbus Day more multicultural, Americans might instead ponder the identities and values that are invoked whenever this particular commemorative ceremony is observed. They should realize what they are actually doing when celebrating Columbus Day – or really, what Columbus Day is doing to them.
And they should appreciate Indian protestations of the holiday as the moral objection of a people whose long experience with colonialism is elided in commemorations of Columbus. There is no room for American Indian history, the past that we’re still living today, in official commemorations of Columbus. The same can be said for Americans of any ethnic persuasion who detest imperialism, whether in the Americas, Vietnam, or the Middle East. There is no room for their history, values or identities either.
In fact, increasingly few of us seem suited for the imperialist work that Columbus is apparently still trying to do. So here’s an idea worth at least a picnic and maybe even a parade: in the name of democracy, liberty and equality – those still-valiant American values – let’s stop doing Columbus Day.
Scott Richard Lyons, Leech Lake Ojibwe, directs the Center for Indigenous Studies at St. John Fisher College, Rochester, N.Y., and is a columnist for Indian Country Today.
