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   From: alt.fan.jai-maharaj@googlegroups.com   
      
   This is not Columbus Day   
      
   By Betty Lyons   
   NY Daily News, nydailynews.com   
   Monday, October 8, 2018   
      
   [Caption] Others were already here. (Associated Press)   
      
   Happy Indigenous People's Day.   
      
   That is what people are saying today in 90 cities and   
   counties large and small across the country today, ranging   
   from Los Angeles and Phoenix to Ithaca and Tompkins County   
   in New York.   
      
   Just last week, Cincinnati and Flagstaff, Ariz., joined the   
   list of cities changing Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples   
   Day.   
      
   New York City, where human rights shouldn't take a backseat   
   to local politics, is not on the list. It should be, and as   
   indigenous peoples, we hope city leaders will begin the   
   process of catching up with the rest of the nation.   
      
   Last year the city engaged in a bracing and divisive debate   
   over statuary depicting historical figures whose atrocities   
   were whitewashed in their presentation to the public.   
   Christopher Columbus was the primary focus of those   
   debates.   
      
   In the final report of the Mayoral Advisory Commission on   
   City Art, Monuments and Markers, at least some   
   commissioners called for the outright removal of the   
   Columbus Circle statue, saying they "cannot envision   
   keeping the monument without honoring a historic figure   
   whose actions in relation to Native peoples represent the   
   beginnings of dispossession, enslavement and genocide."   
      
   This is not about pitting one community against another; we   
   believe everyone has the right to be proud of their   
   heritage. However, it is not acceptable for anyone to   
   embrace the dehumanizing, racist and genocidal policies set   
   off by a view of ethnic superiority that Columbus himself   
   represented and believed.   
      
   Statues of Columbus ignore his enslavement and massacre of   
   indigenous peoples, promotion of sex slavery of children   
   and the imposition of the Doctrine of Discovery, a series   
   of 15th-century papal bulls granting European nations   
   sovereignty over non-Christian lands "discovered" by their   
   explorers that continues to provide the legal underpinning   
   of the denial of land rights to our peoples.   
      
   As we now know from studies of Columbus' diary, these were   
   not ancillary to his activities in setting the stage for   
   the campaigns of genocide against the tens of millions of   
   indigenous peoples who had lived here for millennia. It was   
   core to who he was.   
      
   Continues at:   
      
   http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-indigenous-peoples-da   
   -20181004-story.html   
      
   Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi   
   Om Shanti   
   http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.jai-maharaj   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)