When and why, exactly, Eagle County government started referring to the second Monday in October as “Discovery Day” rather than by its official federal holiday name of Columbus Day is lost in the swirling mists of time.
The county’s institutional memory on the issue dates to at least 2005, county spokeswoman Kris Friel said.
“I took an old press release about office closures and copied it for this year,” Friel said apologetically. “There was not political will behind it. It was a cut and paste.”
However, in other places, there is significant political will — and history — behind celebrating or not celebrating Columbus Day and calling it or not calling it Columbus Day.
“Calling it ‘Discovery Day’ just makes things worse,” said Native American activist Suzan Shown Harjo. “We weren’t discovered. Columbus was lost. He did lurch upon our shores, but he thought he was in India.”
Perhaps the nation should commemorate this undeniably momentous event in history by using a neutral name, she said.
Harjo said she tried out and rejected a few possibilities, such as “Day That Inevitably Led to European Invasion of the Western Continents to Extract Gold.”
“Culture Clash Day” is pithier.
Christopher Columbus, who never set foot on the land that would become the continental United States, nevertheless brought Western Hemisphere land masses to the attention of Europeans.
His arrival over here in 1492 is marked throughout the hemisphere, from northern North America, where Vikings likely preceded him, to Tierra del Fuego in South America. In many countries, such as the Bahamas, Hispaniola and Colombia, the day Columbus landed is called Discovery Day.
Italian-American historian Carol Bonomo Albright said she wouldn’t be happy about any renaming of Columbus Day to something “neutral,” but she thinks it’s conceivable, given the transition of birthday remembrances of Presidents Lincoln and Washington to Presidents Day.
“We need the names of innovators attached to our holidays — not just some generic holiday — so that such people can inspire us,” Albright said.
Columbus, while an explorer, wasn’t so much an innovator as a slaver and oppressor who worked for the Portuguese and Spanish, Harjo said.
The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal society dedicated to defending country, family and faith, turns out in force for Columbus Day events.
Whatever its consequences, Columbus’ arrival in the so-called New World was an enormous development in world history and the man was extremely influential, said Patrick Korten, spokesman for the Connecticut-based Knights of Columbus.
The reason why Catholics named their organization for him was not meant to bedevil the indigenous people. It was done more to irritate the Protestants.
“When the Knights of Columbus was founded in 1882, there was still a lot of anti-Catholic prejudice in the country and the sentiment that papists couldn’t be good citizens,” Kor ten said. “It was a reminder to Protestants that a Catholic discovered America. We got here first.”
No, not first, Harjo noted.
Eagle County officials, who unintentionally brought up the subject, say from now on they will call the holiday whatever the state calls it.
And for the record, the state calls it Columbus Day and has ever since 1907, when Colorado, perhaps surprisingly, became the first state to make it an official government holiday.
Electa Draper: 303-954-1276 or edraper@denverpost.com
Parade Saturday
Conflict over Denver’s Columbus Day parade got started on Thursday, when someone sent e-mails to The Associated Press and 7News announcing the parade had been canceled.
Not true, said Richard SaBell, president of the Sons of Italy Columbus Day Parade Committee.
The e-mail came from a fake account in his name.
“I feel violated,” SaBell said.
Denver police said its computer-crimes unit is investigating.
The parade will go on, beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday at the corner of 15th Street and Court Place, winding around downtown and finishing at Broadway and West 14th Avenue.
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