About 25 UCLA students rallied Monday on the anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ landing in the Americas to protest historical violence toward and colonization of indigenous peoples in America.
The rally, organized by the Native American Law Students Association, calls for the replacement of Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day, which celebrates the culture and legacy of Native Americans and rejects the idea of Columbus as an honorable figure.
The resistance movement against Columbus Day has existed for more than a century.
Many critics say that the holiday symbolizes the celebration of the colonization, enslavement and killing of Native Americans during Columbus’ time and as more settlers arrived in the Americas.
Currently, 16 states in the United States do not recognize Columbus Day as a holiday. California is not among them. Berkeley is believed to be the first city in the country to officially change Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day in 1992.
In the law school courtyard, protesters shared their grievances about the celebration of Columbus Day, reciting essays and poems about the history of the Native Americans after Columbus’ arrival, in what they called a demonstration of “indigenous resistance.”
In particular, participants at the rally said they think the American education system has been a major culprit in contributing to what they call a “white-dominant” narrative within the general population.
“We’ve been taught since we were little that Columbus discovered America and liberalized the Native Americans,” said Marina Gatto, a UCLA first-year law student who learned of the event through La Raza Law Students Association and Womyn of Color Collective.
But Heather Torres, a first-year law student at UCLA and member of the Native American Law Students Association, said Columbus didn’t discover the Americas because Native Americans had already lived there for thousands of years.
“We were already here,” Torres said. “It was our land.”
Geneva Thompson, a second-year law student and president of the Native American Law Students Association, said she thinks the state has celebrated Columbus as a hero who liberated the indigenous people, while ignoring the enslavement of Native Americans that occurred after he arrived in the Americas.
“The idea that a federal holiday sanctions the whitewashing of U.S. history – celebrating the coming of an invader and murderer to our lands – is unacceptable,” said Thompson, who is a member of the Cherokee Nation.
As California currently has the largest percentage of Native Americans in the U.S., and Los Angeles is the city with the second-largest population of Native Americans in the U.S., students said they think that UCLA, which has one of the few Native American law programs in the nation, should be more proactive in educating the student body about Native American history and reaching out to prospective Native American applicants.
In 2013, the UC had 1,680 Native American graduate and undergraduate students, 225 of which attend UCLA, according to the University’s 2014 Accountability Report.
Ben Myers, a member of the Pomo tribe and a law student at UCLA, said he thinks inequities in resources within the state’s K-12 education system and society deter Native American students from higher education.
“The school system hasn’t been an environment that welcomes or encourages Native American students into higher education,” Myers said. “I know of many people who can and should be in school, but who aren’t.”
Let’s not discuss the enslavement and conversion of Native Americans in California by the Spanish. Should we just demolish the missions and change all the saint names (Santa Monica, etc.) because it reminds us of the conversion and oppression of native peoples? Let’s give the boot to that whitewashing 4th grade CA State Education curriculum! While we’re at it, the law students should also rally to ask that the Hispanic/Latino/Chicano/Indigenous populations renounce their Christian and Catholic faith because it is a celebration and reminder of Euro-centric beliefs and oppression. Same for the university model because of its European roots and “discovery” of education.
what is the point of your comment? you are hyperbolizing. celebrating columbus day is a specific act with a specific meaning. It is glorifying a specific person — the supposed ‘discoverer’ of this country. it is glorifying someone who barbarically and gruesomely butchered people. have you not read any of the stories about the things him and his troops did? they slaughtered pregnant women, skewered babies, chopped people’s bodies up, tested the sharpness of their swords by mutilating people. The point of Americans rejecting columbus day is to reject the mythology about Columbus as a discoverer or as someone who did anything good at all. And it is to remind America of its history. This is not to say let’s turn back the clock — obviously we cannot do that. But at least we can remember that this land was inhabited by people that were brutally butchered and whose cultures were beaten out of them. Don’t mask the point of this very specific celebration/protest by going off on a tangent of all the other things that people could to do protest colonialism and reject colonial legacy. a person changing their last name is totally different from the federal government celebrating a murderer.
Dear Daily Bruin and NALSA,
While I applaud your efforts, I am deeply conflicted on ending Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous People’s Day. I would firmly argue for choosing a different day. Changing the name from Columbus to something like Italian American Heritage Day, perhaps, but ending it is a really harsh action.
Columbus Day was started as a federal holiday as a way to commemorate Italian American heritage in the United States. We don’t have any other day, to my knowledge. It would be nice to change the name, as I am personally opposed to naming it after the mass-genocidal actor that was Christopher Columbus, who also was the founder of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (thank you People’s History of the United States by the late and Great Howard Zinn). But history is a bloody business, when everyone was warring against everyone else. Christopher Columbus is venerated as bringing Europe into the wealthy age that it grew off of till now. Sure, Empires preyed on the world…but all Empires prey on the world. Heck, the United States profits off of the world as the only remaining hegemon since the fall of the U.S.S.R. To forget history is to forgo learning on how to not repeat the horrors of the past. The reason the Italian-American heritage day is named after Columbus is because he is celebrated in Italy, for good or ill.
It has unfortunately become the day of Italian-American heritage in this country, and this is something that I strongly believe in, as I am exactly one half American (hello Mayflower) and one-half Italian, and the son of an immigrant to these United States. Thus, I must continue to stand conflicted on this matter.
Best,
Matthew P. FitzGerald
J.D. Candidate UCLA Law Class of 2017