Columbus Day and Oppression–Against Humans, Against Animals, Against Nature

Because I’m not quite ready/able to come back from hiatus yet, but because I also can’t let this day pass without comment, here’s my Columbus Day post from 2009 (at The Previous Blog). Please also see this short but thoughtful video that’s been circulating: “Reconsider Columbus Day.” Edit: Until I saw friend Doris Lin link to it, I failed to realize that there is a larger site associated with the preceding video–http://reconsidercolumbusday.org/.

Like many, I am no fan of Columbus Day. In the way of brief explanation, here is my sarcastic tweet on Columbus Day 2008: “Happy Invade, Conquer, Enslave, Exploit, Infect, and Kill Day, everyone!” That our nation continues to celebrate this day and this man — and this era and what humans did to fellow humans during it — baffles me; it is insulting and embarrassing that we commemorate this with a holiday. But as Tracy Chapman says (see the end of this post), “The ghost of Columbus haunts this world.” And the continued celebration also gives me something to think about today — about our human obsession with conquering and controlling all that and whom we can, from land and water to our fellow humans and our fellow animals.

Have you ever read Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael? I read it many years ago, followed shortly thereafter by Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, and these two books were instrumental in refining the way a very different version of me looked at the world and at the ways we humans try to own, control, and manipulate the natural world around us (these books ended up being the subject of my honors thesis in college). It took me a few years more to move beyond these books and make all the connections — for example, to move beyond concern for and consciousness of primarily the natural world and environment and free-living animals to concern for the domesticated animals I thought of as food and beyond the idea that I could “respect” animals while still killing and eating them when I didn’t have to. But these books were a start for me.

And I came to recognize, as many have, that the way we claim ownership and exert control over our fellow animals is related to the way we have, for centuries, done this to our fellow humans and to nature, in that the instincts come from the same place. The arrogant, oppressive, selfish, and imperialistic ways of thinking and living — that many don’t consciously recognize as driving the way we humans have moved, and continue to move, through the world — are the basis as much for the way we think of and treat our fellow animals as they are for the way we think of and treat forests and oceans and the way we have, for so many years, thought of and treated our fellow humans.

Anyone and anything that is “other” is here for us to conquer, control, and find a way to use for our own benefit. Nothing and no one exists for its or his or her own purposes. What we see (“discover”) and want, we take. As a general rule, we humans see ourselves not as a part of this world but as the rulers of it, as the rulers of all that and who supposedly need conquered, controlled, and tamed.

Away from this blog in the last few weeks, in my day job as a freelance editor, I’ve been copyediting an encyclopedia that’s had me thinking even more than usual about some of these intersections and commonalities too. And though I’ve had time to read only one book since this blog launched last year (eek!), I finally ordered Marjorie Spiegel’s important book The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery last week, which draws the connections between humans’ oppression of nonhuman animals and humans’ oppression of fellow humans. And I find myself also looking over often at Eternal Treblinka on my bookcase, Charles Patterson’s powerful examination of the similarities between our treatment of nonhuman animals and the Holocaust (the latter being Patterson’s area of scholarship), which I still haven’t had time to get more than a fourth of the way through either. Both are books that I must find time to read.

On this Columbus Day, I suggest exploring some of these issues — issues of oppression and violence against our fellow humans and against our other fellow animals and our natural world — rather than being glad for the day off if you have it or jealous of others’ day off if you don’t. And if you have kids who are getting skewed, Columbus-the-hero history lessons this week, please consider giving them the truth. They’ll be better-educated, more compassionate kids for it. I’ll conclude by gathering up all the books mentioned here as well as a couple relevant Columbus Day pieces into a recommended reading list, followed also by a recommended listen:

Posts/Articles on Columbus Day

• Re-Remembering Christopher Columbus on Columbus Day from The Progressive (good post, but in the context of animals and oppression, take note of his casual comparison to “waiting to be boarded like cattle”)
• Brown Students Protest Renaming of Columbus Day (some Republican students apparently still cling to what they were taught in first grade and object to others’ efforts to be sensitive and compassionate — lovely)

Books Mentioned in This Post

• The Dreaded Comparison, Marjorie Spiegel
• Eternal Treblinka, Charles Patterson
• Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko
• Ishmael, Daniel Quinn

And finally, if you have never heard Tracy Chapman’s “America” from the Where You Live album, this ill-conceived holiday is the day to experience it. Video of a live performance and the lyrics follow:

You were lost and got lucky
Came upon the shore
Found you were conquering America
You spoke of peace
But waged a war
While you were conquering America

There was land to take
And people to kill
While you were conquering America
You served yourself
Did God’s will
While you were conquering America

The ghost of Columbus haunts this world
‘Cause you’re still conquering America
The meek won’t survive
Or inherit the earth
‘Cause you’re still conquering America

America, America, America

You found bodies to serve
Submit and degrade
While you were conquering America
Made us soldiers and junkies, prisoners and slaves
While you were conquering America

America, America, America

Your hands are at my throat
My back’s against the wall
Because you’re still conquering America
We’re sick and tired, hungry and poor
‘Cause you’re still conquering America

You bomb the very ground
That feeds your own babies
You’re still conquering America
Your sons and your daughters
May never sing your praises
While you’re conquering America

America, America, America

I see your eyes seek a distant shore
While you’re conquering America
Taking rockets to the moon
Trying to find a new world
And you’re still conquering America

America, America, America

The ghost of Columbus haunts this world
‘Cause you’re still conquering America
You’re still conquering America
You’re still conquering America

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Photo uploaded to stock.xchng by smoku1976