[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