Columbus and Memory

Two years ago, I posted this reflection on Columbus Day. I was prompted to the reflection in part by an ongoing tiff with the very idea of Columbus Day, the idea that we mark such a terrifying event in world history with a day of leisure. I was prompted just as much (or more) by a New York Times article on laying claim to the Columbus name…what it means to be a long descended relative, etc. On this Columbus Day, I wanted to revisit the holiday and a particular video that’s making the viral rounds.

The video is simple, direct, and moving. In the style of a “public service announcement,” the video reminds us of the horrible history initiated by Columbus’ arrival in what came to be called the Americas.

Now, I can’t quibble with the sentiment and the outrage. Stories of voyage and discovery persist, starting in childhood books and the remaining part of our imagination in adulthood. When met with a wholly indisputable set of historical facts, adults are often still resistant and unwilling, for one reason or another, to face reckoning with the past and our origins as a country and named continent.

It is this idea of reckoning that came to mind when I saw the kind-of-PSA. The message of the video is both clear and undecided. What is clear is the reminder of historical atrocity: the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean were decimated within decades, nearly to the point of complete vanishing (Dominica is the only country with a population of indigenous peoples, which has occasioned its own sorts of issues regarding marriage, travel, and the like). What is unclear and still undecided, however, is the question of what to do with this thing called “Columbus Day.” My guess about the kind-of-PSA, and this might be obvious in the video, is that the sentiment is “let’s get rid of this thing.”

That’s where I hesitate. For sure, the uncritical, strangely nostalgic (if we Americans really even think twice about the holiday at all) embrace of the holiday has got to go. No doubt. But I’m not so sure that the name and the day should be forgotten. Quite the contrary, the severity of the atrocities done, then put in motion by Christopher Columbus ought to intensify our memory of arrival, conquest, genocide, and everything thereafter. We need something more than a reminder of the atrocity. We need something more like a recognition – that first stage of an authentic reckoning – and a moment of memory. How to do that? That’s difficult work and demands careful attention to many things. For what it’s worth, I’ve wondered about a moment of silence, made official, and so a part of the public face of Columbus Day. Or maybe some form of reparations to those who remain. Reparations are no small part of making memory concrete and actionable. Much to think about, many things to imagine.

However we make Columbus Day a day of memory, I still say it isn’t a day that should go away. That’s telling a lie about who we are. The day can’t, just like all of us here, on the continent and not indigenous (indigenous folks, a different story), we can’t go away. What we’re left with is a painful memory. What to do with that painful memory is an even tougher question than raising awareness about atrocities. But it is probably the most important and urgent question we should be asking.