'What to the American Indian is Colombus Day?'

When Frederick Douglass asks 'What to the slave is the Fourth of July?' - he exposes the meta-historical naivety of the nationalist and democratic ideologies upon which the celebrations of Indepence day are predicated. He reveals the rife hypocrisy upon which the nation of America was founded and developed, a hypocrisy that was considered superfluous to America's prosperity and, accordingly, a hypocrisy that went largely without contestation by the very cultures responsible for its  existence and centrality to the collective identity of this American Nation.

Douglass posed this poignant question in 1852, and it is now 2017. However, my personal experiences and studies since arriving in Montana have brought me into close contact (personal, academic and professional) with the diverse cultures of the American Indian Nations that live here and have now led me to consider the implications of Douglass' writing for these indigenous communities as they deal with their own sense of identity, visibility and validity in modern America. Even a rudimentary historical understanding of such cultures will reveal the ease with which Douglass' question can be quickly transferred from an enslaved and dehumanised African-American demographic to a marginalised and massacred Native American population.

While the Fourth of July constitutes a celebration of America's independence and by association, a general outpouring of patriotism and nationalist sentiments, the federally-recognised celebration of Colombus day (the second Monday of every October) applauds Christopher Colombus for his discovery of America which ultimately, would culminate in the colonisation of America and its inception as a sovereign power. However, as the Fourth of July was racially selective in its recognition of independence and freedom, so too is Colombus day a projection of the dominant European-derived culture under which their sense of exceptionalism is reinforced while conveniently ignoring the holocaust of North America's indigenous peoples instigated by the eponymous explorer.

While the response from these Native communities to the holiday was and is less visible than that of Frederick Douglass (perhaps an indication of their near-complete expulsion from the dominant society within which they live in the reservation system), it is nonetheless poignant and striking in its similarities with the popularised African-American equivalent. As demonstrated by Douglass, much contemporary Native media uses Colombus Day as an opportunity to contest the dominant narrative of Colombus as the hero and intrepid explorer and insert their own voice into this narrative in order to reveal its artificial nature and to articulate an objective perspective on his discoveries and their implications. Although this issue is vast and almost inexhaustible in its complexity and tendency to segue into further discussions, it is one that remains pertinent to our study of such issues as race in early American Literature. Finally, it is worth noting that several cities and regions across the United States have since declined to recognise Colombus Day for its one-dimensional narrative and its inevitable ability to incite violence against an already troubled national demographic of American Indians. Indeed, such cities as Los Angeles, CA and Albuquerque, NM have since replaced Colombus Day with 'Indigenous People's Day' in an effort to reverse the harm caused by its predecessor and to highlight the dynamic role they occupy in America in the twenty-first century.