10/12/2020
Listen.
1. You can't "discover" a place someone is already living.
2. Dude didn't ever set foot in North America. He landed in the Bahamas.
3. Even if we wanted to ignore both of those (which we can't) he was (by his own admission in his writings) a horrible human who severely mistreated, beat, and r***d other humans.
There's absolutely no reason to celebrate this man.
In summary, he didn't even do the thing we celebrate him for, AND he was a terrible human.
Tomorrow, October 12th is Indigenous Peoples Day. This is what you should spend time talking about with your students. Can you mention Columbus? Sure. But be sure to talk about him in the context of what he did wrong and how he harmed the original people that he encountered. Make sure you talk about the long, long history of Indigenous Peoples and how They. Still. Exist. They didn't and don't all live in Teepees. They didn't and don't all wear feathers on their head. They were not just one people (hence the plural form- peoples). They mattered and still matter. Their history and their present and their future is important.
Columbus? He's just a bad guy who got lost and then continued to be a bad guy. That's it.
