Oh lost sailor, we hail your "discovery"

A day to celebrate....
what?

That an Italian outcast, lost at sea, finally found a piece of land?

That after thousands of years of being inhabitated by "pre-historic" peoples, it now miraculously entered into being a bonafide, recognized part of the earth's land mass since a European's feet had touched its soil?

The inception of civilizing and christianizing the savages of the New World?

I am not sure what to feel on this day, but I know that it isn't an incredible admiration for a sailor lost at sea, somewhere in the order of 5,000 miles off course from his destination of India.

And I do question what exactly he "discovered" that makes us want to celebrate.

I have to think of our astronauts here...we land on the seemingly lifeless moon, but we don't claim Armstrong and company to have "discovered" the moon. So why do we put this honor upon a guy who comes upon a land filled with cultures, civilizations, and history far deeper than the European lands from which he was banished.

We must realize the powerful ways that language suggesting that the C-guy "discovered" this land dismisses all peoples native to this land before his arrival...it is the same language that allowed droves of Europeans to follow the path to Turtle Island, feeling that this was their land to own and conquer, regardless of how many sub-human Natives they had to massacre, and regardless of how many sub-human Africans they forced to toil in chains to make America the Beautiful

Be careful of how flippantly we treat a day like today, and consider celebrating the many cultures and peoples who truly have claim to being "discoverers" of this land the next time the second Monday in October rolls around.