It's a Good Day to Be Indigenous

Denver was the first American city to celebrate Columbus Day. A lot of people are working to make it the first city to transform that holiday by getting rid of the connection to Christopher Columbus, for reasons that are well documented.

For several years, Denver did not have a Columbus Day celebration or parade, only a celebration of diversity by a coalition mostly composed of Chicanos and Native Americans. A few years ago, some people, mostly from the suburbs, brought the Columbus Day parade back, and since then there has been an annual confrontation between the Columbus Day marchers and the Transform Columbus Day Coalition. Now every Columbus Day weekend there is a Columbus Day march but also a "Four Directions All Nations March", in which marchers converge on Cuernavaca Park in downtown Denver from the north, south, east and west, symbolizing the convergence of cultures in America.

The local media likes to play this up as a racial confrontation between "Italian-Americans" and "Native Americans," or even Italian-Americans vs. Chicanos, because many of the Four Directions marchers are Chicano. Denver has a large population of members of native tribes compared to most American cities, largely concentrated in North Denver where there is also a large Chicano community. For Denver Chicanos, the Four Directions march is an opportunity to identify with our indigenous heritage. I know some people find it perplexing to see Chicanos on TV speaking of genocide against "us," when mainstream culture identifies Chicanos by our connection to "Hispanic/Latino" culture instead of recognizing our mixed European and native heritage. Participating in the Four Directions march is a way to reclaim heritage that is denied by the ever-present "Hispanic" label, and it also shows that "Hispanic" label or not, there is a lot of identification between Chicanos and members of indigenous tribes.

The alleged racial hostility surrounding the weekend seems largely a media creation. The pro-Columbus Day group says they are motivated by Italian-American pride, not anti-Native American sentiment. Similarly, the Transform Columbus Day group has this to say:

Our opposition to Columbus and Columbus Day is not anti-Italian. We celebrate the beautiful, positive contributions of Italians around the globe. We acknowledge the history of discrimination and exclusion that has been experienced by Italians in the U.S., and we condemn those practices. In the same vein, we reject the position that Italian culture can or should be a celebration of colonization and slavery. We encourage all Italians and Italian-Americans of good will to celebrate their culture by repudiating Columbus and by joining those Italians/Italian Americans in this alliance.

To me, having a Columbus Day march through the middle of a city with such large Chicano and Native American communities is like having Protestant marches through the Catholic parts of Northern Ireland. It's an unnecessary provocation. Denver has plenty of other holidays that celebrate ethnic pride -- St. Patrick's Day, Cinco de Mayo, Juneteenth, the Greek Festival and the Cherry Blossom Festival, to name a few -- and all of them manage not to alienate other groups of people. Instead of standing on their First Amendment rights, I wish the supporters of the Columbus Day march would work together with the Transform Columbus Day coalition to come up with a way to celebrate Italian-American culture and heritage without honoring someone whose name is synonymous with genocide and oppression for the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Update: Luz Paz has more.

Comments

[Tome]

Spaniards are not hispanics, and hispanics aren't white Europeans. They're 'like-Spanish', relating to Spain. The word doesn't even exist in Europe, and who said the Portuguese are hispanic. They are not, they don't even speak Spanish so why bother to call them that. They're latinos and so are the Spaniards, Italians, French, and Romanians. Just classify them as latinos or white Europeans, even if you fill out an application. And there is no such thing as a hispanic white. Latin is a designation sometimes loosely given to certain nations, esp. the French, Spanish, and Italians, who speak languages principally derived from it.