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Gone, just like that … New Mexico Senate votes to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day

March 17, 2019 | | Print Article

 

(Wikimedia public domain)

Columbus Day will soon no longer exist in the increasingly left-wing state of New Mexico.

Last month the New Mexico House passed a bill 50-12 to transform Columbus Day into Indigenous People’s Day. On Friday the state’s Senate approved the bill, meaning it now heads to virulently far-left Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to sign, according to Fox News.

What are the chances Grisham will sign the bill? Her record speaks for itself:

Six years ago the then-Democrat congresswoman walked out of a House Oversight and Government Reform committee right before the family members of two men who were murdered during the Benghazi terrorist attack were set to speak.

When then-Rep. Carlos Curbelo tried two years ago to join the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which at the time Grisham chaired, he was rejected for being a Republican.

So to answer the earlier question, those New Mexico residents who appreciate American history — including the history of the man whose amazing discovery led to the formation of the greatest country on Earth — might as well just say goodbye to Columbus Day, because it’s over, man.

And not just in New Mexico:

Why is it over? Because of grievance mongering.

“Indigenous Peoples’ Day recognizes that Native Americans and indigenous communities are central to New Mexico’s rich and vibrant cultural history,” state Rep. Derrick Lente said to the Albuquerque Journal after the bill passed the House in February.

“He also said Christopher Columbus had left a legacy of murder, torture and rape of indigenous people during his four expeditions to the Americas,” the journal noted.

In regard to the first point, why is it necessary to remove Columbus Day to celebrate “Native Americans and indigenous communities?” Why can’t both be celebrated simultaneously?

As for the second point, Lente seems to be blissfully unaware that Native Americans and indigenous communities have their own history of murder, torture and rape.

In 1622 the Powhatan tribe in the Jamestown area committed “a sudden attack against colonists throughout the area, massacring 347 of a total of about 1,200,” thus launching the beginning of the Powhatan War, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

The point is that plenty of atrocities were committed by all sides in history. And if the explorers and white settlers in American history don’t deserve to be celebrated anymore because of some of the atrocities they committed, then the rule should also apply to indigenous people.

But fairness isn’t what the far-left seeks. What it wants is to erase or even rewrite history.

Take the history of Columbus.

“Even by today’s standards, and despite what you might hear, Columbus was a man whose approach to the native people he met during his first voyage was exemplary, taking delight in their friendliness and happy demeanor,” Jeanne Allen, the founder and CEO of the Center for Education Reform, notes.

“He was firm in his orders to his men not to abuse them in any way, and severely disciplined those who disobeyed. He was less pleased with those from other tribes he encountered later, such as the warlike Caribs, who practiced cannibalism. Had he lived long enough to witness the large scale human sacrifice practiced by the Aztecs, he would doubtless have been even less pleased.”

Yet none of this positive history is of concern to the left.

“Rep. Candy Spence Ezzell, R-Roswell, who said she has Cherokee ancestry, described the proposal as part of a broader push to remove controversial historical markers,” the Journal reported.

And there it is. It’s no different than the left’s push to eliminate Confederate statues, rename buildings named after the Founding Fathers and even redo the U.S. Constitution!

HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE MISSING …

Like former President Barack Hussein Obama, the contemporary left hopes to “fundamentally transform” America and its history into something it’s not, has never been and never will be. And it just so happens that eliminating Columbus Day is part of that agenda.

The key problem with this agenda is that it’s only serving to stir up the divisions of the past. Unlike in American history, there is no more conflict between white “settlers” and America’s indigenous people. Everybody lives in harmony, but that harmony is now being disturbed.

“I think this bill is more about dividing us than bringing us together,” state Sen. Mark Moores, a Republican opponent of House Bill 100, explained to the Journal.

Perhaps dividing the American people is exactly what the left wants?

*shrugs*

HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE MISSING …

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Vivek Saxena
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