US Columbus Day marked with celebration and protest

From rt.com

For most Americans, there is no work or school. The second Monday of every October is Christopher Columbus Day, a federal holiday. 

A national holiday marked with celebrations, parades and shopping bargains; all of it to honor the conquest of the Americas by Christopher Columbus and his western development of the new world. In the US Columbus means America.

But not for ReconsiderColumbusDay.org; “For way too long, Columbus created heinous crimes against the indigenous populations of the Caribbean and millions of Natives throughout the Americas. And Columbus set the stage for the slave trade in the New World.”

For Indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere, the landing of Columbus in the new world has another meaning; one that welcomes protests every year.

From San Juan Capistrano, California where one protester points to a plaque at a missionary, "Look here, it says to Christianize and to civilize the Indians. What are they trying to say? We are all savages? It's pure racism!"

At Boise State University in Idaho, protests condemned the treatment of Native people by Columbus; “Thank you Mr. Columbus, for humiliation, extermination, indoctrination."

At Arizona State University, students from an NGO known as Freedom Rising staged a dramatization.

"KILL HER, KILL THEM, GET RID OF THEM!" an actress shouted to a group of Native actors.

Even Rhode Island where one newscaster reported, "At Brown University – Earlier this year, Brown voted to boycott the Christopher Columbus day Holiday after 700 hundreds students signed a petition blasting Christopher Columbus' treatment of Native Americans."

It's a day of mourning for Native tribes in Washington State, Colorado and throughout the countless Indian reservations in the country. In Washington, DC an annual ceremony honoring Columbus takes place in the backdrop of the US Capitol.

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