[Documentary] Peabody Award Winner, "Surviving Columbus"

In honor of Indigenous People's Day, here is a powerful PBS award-winning documentary on the history of the Pueblo peoples in New Mexico and the destruction of their communities and ways of life of the peaceful Zuni due to a misguided Spanish myth of the seven golden cities of Cíbola. Spanish greed for gold led people like Francisco Vásquez Coronado's arrival. There, of course, was no gold to be found, much less golden cities.

I hope that we, as a country, stop acknowledging Columbus Day honorifically as the "arrival" of the Columbus when this mythic national narrative severely distorts the actual narrative of invasion, death, and destruction of native peoples who were termed "savages," surely to mask and justify the actual savagery of Western European colonizers. 

We must continue to decolonize ourselves and the K-12 and higher education curriculum in our country.

Thanks to University of New Mexico Professor Dr. Irene Vasquez for sharing.

-Angela Valenzuela

Happy Indigenous People’s Day! 9 Things White People Have ‘Columbused’

Today, October 12 is Indigenous People's Day. I do like this phrase from this piece below: "We got Columbused!" I take this to mean war with native people's, genocide, colonization, theft, appropriation, and distorted perspectives of our communities with an enduring impact as the actual violence of "getting Columbused" hides behind, and masquerades today as, white privilege, entitlement, and neoliberalism.

Indigenous People's Day used to be—and still is in many places—Columbus Day. Thankfully, the name for this holiday got abolished in 2017 by the Austin City Council.  What we must acknowledge is how Columbus Day is a day of mourning for Indigenous peoples.  

Indigenous People's Day, in contrast, reclaims and re-casts Indigeneity, land sovereignty, and struggle as ongoing decolonial projects from Indigenous people's perspectives.

For school curriculum, a good place to start is with Rethinking School's publication titled, "Rethinking Columbus Expanded Second Edition:The Next 500 Years."

-Angela Valenzuela

#decolonize

Happy Indigenous People’s Day! 9 Things White People Have ‘Columbused’

Happy Columbused Day!

Source: GraphicaArtis / Getty

UPDATED: 8:00 A.M. ET, Oct. 12, 2020 —

A growing number of states are officially recognizing Monday as Indigenous People’s Day, a new name replacing or being celebrated alongside Columbus Day, an old holiday that honored a slave-owning, racist, disease-spreading Spaniard who is controversially credited with “discovering” land that was already occupied by Native Americans. The fact that the latest installment of Indigenous People’s Day fell in a year marked by a nationwide racial reckoning made it all the more significant.

Continue reading HERE.

Rethinking Columbus Expanded Second Edition:The Next 500 Years

Edited by Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson

Inside the three hours it took to get Trump's 'white power' tweet deleted Laura Clawson Daily Kos Staff

Said by the person who says he's the "least racist person in the world."  He should just own being a white supremacist.  As mentioned in my previous post, it has certainly been obvious to Europeans. 

After all, fascism and white supremacy are European inventions that are not of this continent. These false ideologies come from another land and they have been poisoning humanity for a few centuries now, dating back to 1492 when Columbus first set sail.  It's entirely synchronous that on this very day, the Columbus statue in Columbus, Ohio, just came down. 

Not at all a frivolous decision, as we are witnessing a symbolic re-ordering that has for too long ordered and subjugated us a peoples native to this continent. I'm just amazed that this is happening in my lifetime.

Regarding other news from today, what's this about somehow not getting the intelligence about Russia putting bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan when he had actually been briefed several times for well over a year?!  I can only imagine how angry and frustrated the intelligence and military community are with their leader, a self-proclaimed "Il duce."

Trump condemns neither white power nor Putin power. He has no ethical core.

What he is politically, however, is abundantly clear. He is a white nationalist, fascist and a traitor to our country.

-Angela Valenzuela

#SayNoToFascism

Inside the three hours it took to get Trump's 

'white power' tweet deleted

Kayleigh McEnany Getty Images

The basic facts are these: Sunday morning, Donald Trump tweeted about the “great people” in a video in which one of his supporters yelled “white power.” Three hours later, he deleted the tweet. Through the rest of Sunday and Monday, neither Trump nor any official spokesperson condemned the use of “white power” as a rallying cry. But how did it happen?

The White House continues to claim that Trump didn’t hear the white power part. It’s not that he didn’t listen to the video, aides say, he just somehow didn’t hear it. Or bother to condemn it once he knew about it. But, The Washington Post reports, “senior White House advisers say they immediately realized they had a problem” with the tweet, and it “set off a scramble.”

“Senior staffers  quickly conferred over the phone and then began trying to reach the president to convey their concerns about the tweet,” the Post reports. “White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, son-in-law Jared Kushner and other senior advisers spoke with president, said several people familiar with the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of private conversations.”

And three hours later, Trump agreed to have the tweet deleted, “moved, in large part, by the public calls from Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the Senate’s only black Republican, to do just that, aides said.”

In other words, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that Trump would agree to delete the tweet. It took Kayleigh and Jared and unnamed other senior advisers and someone pointing out that it’s probably a good idea to listen to the Senate’s only Black Republican on this one. 

Although NBC News reported that the delay was also because White House officials could not immediately reach Trump, who “was at his golf club in Virginia and had put his phone down.”

Sit with that a minute: The president of the United States could not be reached for permission to delete a white power tweet because he was golfing.

Since then, Trump and the White House have had ample opportunity to distance themselves from the call for “white power.” Trump’s Twitter feed, for instance. Or when McEnany appeared on Fox & Friends on Monday and said “His point in tweeting out that video was to stand with his supporters, who are oftentimes demonized.” (Yeah, for saying things like “white power.”) Or when McEnany held a press briefing and claimed “he did not hear that particular phrase,” but somehow did not get a question about whether he condemned it until she had ended the briefing and was leaving, when she ignored questions shouted after her. (Not exactly well played, White House press.) 

”A senior White House official said that had McEnany been asked, she was prepared to say that of course the president condemns white power, white nationalism and racism in any form,” the Post reports. She just … didn’t. Which is telling—although we already knew what it tells us.