Why Columbus Sailed

Tallguy88 said:

That your previous assertion was not entirely accurate.

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Maybe we had misunderstand here but my assertion was that those people who had be liberated from Antec rule merely fell into Spanish rule. The tribe in question was never under Aztec rule.

bill5 said:

I see, so give someone a holiday at least in part because they aren't white? A racist holiday. Sorry I'll pass.

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Not really a someone as this involves a whole collective group of people who have been dumped on, and in certain cases and situations, still continue to be dumped on. Most ethnic groups have some kind of day where they celebrate their heritage and history, but Natives really don't have that. Unless you think the scantily used Sacajawea as amounting to something.

bill5 said:

You want to force businesses to give employees a day off? And that somehow makes it "mean something" it wouldn't have otherwise? ???

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Compare and contrast the number of days off with regards to holidays alone in this country with other developed nations. Even with that said, a few employers still go so far as to require people work on certain holidays. Whether those employees are then reasonably compensated for that extra work is to be discussed in another appropriate thread.

faroukfarouk said:

Yes, good point. Also, to your earlier point, James Bartelsman was Ontario's Lieutenant-Governor and he is of First Nations heritage, and he said his ancestors moved to the Muskoka region in the 19th century and so he find it odd to think that somehow the land belonged exclusively to one racial group (renaming everything for First Nations names would seem to imply that it did).

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To which I say BFD. There are few humans in history that, when it comes to oh i don't know, discovering new land, weren't psycho about it. We can't pretend that they were all like us. Only showing inhumanity on the anonymous internet.

Oh crud. I meant to quote Loammi in the above post. Sorry Fak

LoAmmi said:

I think we should just let the man speak for himself:

"They... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned.... They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane.... They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."

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add my above post to this quote. Again sorry far.

The statements in the article are from an interview with a scholar who did in fact do research on Columbus.

So why is it we're suppose to reject her research and accept a group of angry Native Americans who have no documentation to present the point of view of natives in that part of the world in that era ?


Jim

JimR-OCDS said:

The statements in the article are from an interview with a scholar who did in fact do research on Columbus.

So why is it we're suppose to reject her research and accept a group of angry Native Americans who have no documentation to present the point of view of natives in that part of the world in that era ?

Jim

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Was she alive then? I'd take the word of those for whom the stories have been passed down throughout the years. And also the research that shows how Columbus and his crew brought syphilis and other diseases with him.

We're just suppose to see this statement by the scholar as bogus

Columbia: The popular view today is that Columbus is responsible for countless atrocities against the native peoples. In your opinion, is this a fair assessment?

Carol Delaney: No, not at all. The late 20th century brought a lot of critique about him from the perspective of the natives, and Columbus has become a symbol for everything that went wrong. But the more I read of his own writings and that of his contemporaries, my understanding of him totally changed. His relations with the natives tended to be benign. He liked the natives and found them to be very intelligent. He also described them as “natural Christians” because they had no other “sect,” or false faith, and believed that they could easily become Christians if they had instruction.

Columbus strictly told the crew not to do things like marauder or rape, and instead to treat the native people with respect. There are many examples in his writings where he gave instructions to this effect. Most of the time when injustices occurred, Columbus wasn’t even there. There were terrible diseases that got communicated to the natives, but he can’t be blamed for that.

A lot of the crewmembers didn’t like all of the restrictions and rebelled. In his writings, Columbus notes that the crew assumed that they could have slaves, that they could pick gold off of the trees, and that they didn’t have to work.

Hetta said:

Was she alive then? I'd take the word of those for whom the stories have been passed down throughout the years. And also the research that shows how Columbus and his crew brought syphilis and other diseases with him.

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Thanks for pointing out that you didn't read the article, or didn't understand it.

There is documentation supporting what the scholar in the interview found.

There are no survivors of the native tribes he encountered left on the earth today. Most died of European diseases.

Also, hearsay stories are often not factual, but based on myth and exagerations.

Jim

Hetta said:

Was she alive then? I'd take the word of those for whom the stories have been passed down throughout the years. And also the research that shows how Columbus and his crew brought syphilis and other diseases with him.

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Everyone knows that history is written by the victors and that history is often times distorted to make the victors look more important than what they really are or were. And that is one of the reasons why I take the word or the so-called research of a non-native with a grain of salt and resort back to my elders or to our stories which have been passed down through the generations, or to an actual native who has done the research on issues such as this one themselves. I cannot think of anything much more arrogant than for a non-native trying to tell me something about my people or our history while completely disregarding, and often times mocking, our traditional stories.

JimR-OCDS said:

Thanks for pointing out that you didn't read the article, or didn't understand it.

There is documentation supporting what the scholar in the interview found.

There are no survivors of the native tribes he encountered left on the earth today. Most died of European diseases.

Also, hearsay stories are often not factual, but based on myth and exagerations.

Jim

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My point exactly.

Red Fox said:

Everyone knows that history is written by the victors and that history is often times distorted to make the victors look more important than what they really are. And that is one of the reasons why I take the word or the so-called research of a non-native with a grain of salt and resort back to my elders or to our stories which have been passed down, or to an actual native who has done the research on issues such as this one themselves. I cannot think of anything more arrogant than for a non-native to try and tell me anything about my people or our history while completely disregarding, and often times mocking, our stories and traditions.

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It's no different that the stories told by the allies after WWII. The victor does always write that story, and everything else is disregarded. Germans = evil, bottom line. Even though millions were perfectly ordinary people.

Of course stories were passed down. They didn't, after all, manage to murder every single native American Indian (although they tried).

Amusingly, Americans who were the losers in the Vietnam war, are still trying to re-write that story via movies.

Crowns&Laurels said:

To murder every native he could find.

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That Christian love just feels so good.

Red Fox said:

Everyone knows that history is written by the victors and that history is often times distorted to make the victors look more important than what they really are or were. And that is one of the reasons why I take the word or the so-called research of a non-native with a grain of salt and resort back to my elders or to our stories which have been passed down, or to an actual native who has done the research on issues such as this one themselves. I cannot think of much more arrogant than for a non-native to tell me something about my people or our history while completely disregarding, and often times mocking, our traditional generational stories.

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What of natives who also don't paint a particular nice picture of natives as a whole? Because there are those tribes who will talk about other tribes that they sparred with, especially those who colluded with the French, British, and Colonists, Americans.

Don't disparage and discredit every non Native who studies Native culture and history as most don't have an axe to grind.

Hetta said:

Amusingly, Americans who were the losers in the Vietnam war, are still trying to re-write that story via movies.

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How?

Sumwear said:

How?

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You've never seen Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, Born on the Fourth of July, etc etc etc.

None of those movies rewrote history. If anything it showed what a useless war it was.

Hetta said:

You've never seen Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, Born on the Fourth of July, etc etc etc.

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Sumwear said:

What of natives who also don't paint a particular nice picture of natives as a whole? Because there are those tribes who will talk about other tribes that they sparred with, especially those who colluded with the French, British, and Colonists, Americans.

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I know of those stories, warts and all.

Sumwear said:

Don't disparage and discredit every non Native who studies Native culture and history as most don't have an axe to grind.

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I said I take the word or the so-called research of a non-native with a grain of salt. If I have a problem with it, I ask an elder or I refer to native sources and stories. I do not take the word of a non-native on issues at face value unless it aligns with what has been taught and believed among my people. The sad truth is the one thing I have learned and I know many other NDNs have also learned in our own lives and from what our ancestors experienced, we cannot always trust the word or promises of non-native people.

Hetta said:

You've never seen Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, Born on the Fourth of July, etc etc etc.

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In what ways do those movies try to rewrite Vietnam? They all show the horrors of that war and have various snippets in varying degrees of how pointless it all was.