Columbus Was No Hero

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I met Alive With Skies when he was passing out flyers for the Columbus Day Protest at a reggae show a couple weeks back. He is a Native man from an American Indian Movement family and a community organizer.

We talked about growing up amidst the colonial regime that instructed me to play the role of "occupier" and him as "occupied", not because of skin color--he's the same tone as me--but because of continental heritage. We talked about the problems in the cities. We talked about the problems on the reservations. We talked about the hope growing on the reservations and in the cities as Native youth recapture their languages, cultures, and traditional knowledge of natural harmony and healing. We talked about the impending collapse of Babylon and the need for strong Native leadership to pull those righteous ones out of the fire. We talked so long that I missed most of the show. And then we said "til next time"...

"Next time" was yesterday, at the Columbus Day protest in Westlake Park. A large banner was hung demanding that America "Abolish Columbus Day", more signs and banners announced the atrocities committed by Columbus and the Europeans invaders that have occupied this land for 500+ years. The worst genocide in history has been committed RIGHT HERE in the USA and this genocide continues every day on American city streets.

About 3 dozen people gathered in the cold to beat native drums, chant prayers, and listen to the testimonies of American Indian Movement leaders, Native youth, and brothers and sisters in conscience. I spoke about the history of my own birth place, Sedro-Woolley, WA. A place that white people first came to in the 1890s, many of them KKK supporters who ran the natives off the rivers to be replaced by asphalt, steel tracks, mines, and timber mills. In the 1920s, the KKK was ruling the roost, terrorizing Natives, Mexicans, Asians, Blacks, Jews, and Catholics. They supported the immigration of northern European protestants to dominate Western Washington. And, in the 1950s, these same Klan families put the last of the Natives on reservations. I grew up next to one of these reservations, and amongst the businesses and families that those Klan people built. As I recounted at the protest, those same Klansmen that ran the Upper Skagit Natives onto a reservation in the 50s in order to dam their river and provide power to the city of Seattle, were still there selling Oldsmobiles and collecting municipal paychecks when I was growing up there. I saw a whole generation of Natives whose lives had been completely destroyed, and I saw the Natives of my generation striving to create a future for themselves in a system and a culture that had already written them off as extinct.

And so that's why I was down there. America, it's been 500 years. The blood is on your hands. God and History has judged you wrong. It's time to open up dialogue and start actively working to heal wounds and turn the tide of ongoing brutality. If you don't open your minds, your mouths, your hearts, and your hands, the fire will be truly painful for you. Start today. Maybe I will see you at Westlake Park next year as we again protest the celebration of a "Holiday" that commemorates the most brutal slave-driver and rapist in history.

Here's a quote from Columbus to leave you with:
"They are well-built and handsome people...
they love easily, as if giving you their whole heart...
with fifty men we could subjugate them and make them do whatever we want."

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