2) I remember when the local school changed Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day.
In-di-gen-ous.
Hard to spell.
3) So I guess this is how you have to teach it now.
4) To many people, Columbus Day is immoral because it essentially celebrates a greed that led to mass murder.
5) To many people, it is incredibly morally offensive that we celebrate herding the Native Americans into reservations where they live in squalor.
6) But then the obvious question comes up.
7) If you feel bad about doing something wrong, why don’t you fix it?
8) The people who are offended by “Columbus Day” would like to make reparations...of some kind. npr.org/templates/stor…
9) 10/12/2009, @NPR — Rep. John McCoy (D-Wash.) on the a “resolution” to “formally apologize”—
“It’s an acknowledgement of what happened during all those years.”
“In essence, we're correcting history.”
Does the apology actually do anything concrete though? How about money?
“there is no money tied to this, but the apology is important.”
12) (sorry, the above Tweets were 10 and 11) —
Of course, the question then becomes...how much is an apology alone worth?
13) I mean, it’s easy to say you’re sorry.
14) I have a better idea.
15) If we truly feel sorry that we rampaged across another man’s land...why don’t we just give it back?
Oh wait. We don’t want to go that far. NOBODY EVER SUGGESTED THAT. Don’t quote me.
16) You see, the “big debate” over Columbus Day as a holiday is not about an actual thing.
Only its representation.
It’s a grossly offensive gesture aimed only at assuaging White guilt, while constantly retaining its privilege.
Eg, we always remain heroes.
17) Rep. McCoy acknowledges the limited value of an apology for his Native American constituents.
“Well, among most of the tribes that I work with, we don't put any emphasis on today. It's kind of like just another day.”
Right? Everybody has to eat.
18) But what about the atrocities, Sir?
What about the “Indian boarding schools?”
19) “The students were punished if they spoke their own language....they were beaten...abused. The girls were sexually abused. And it was just a horrible life.”
Here is a picture of students at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, PA, around 1900.
33) To this day I cannot watch my grandmother’s tapes.
34) To this day I can’t deal with what may have happened to my grandmother in Auschwitz. cnn.com/2011/WORLD/eur…
35) My father prefers to say that she escaped death miraculously 4 times; that she worked as a “bookkeeper” for the Nazis in the camp; that she was “contemptuous” of them.
36) But if you press him, he will also say that my grandmother met Mengele (pictured here with George H. Bush? not sure of that) on the way out.
And that Mengele mocked her and said she would be barren.
That my Zayde married her knowing what had happened.
37) What we need is not an apology.
What we need is to find out the real, historical truth.
And to make sure that the perpetrators of atrocities never have that power again.
She talks about being a localization specialist because they're good at blackmail. That doesn't make any sense. Localization has to do with creating strategies that appeal to local populations. From a development perspective it is correlated with resilience. There is no magic.
In her words: "What I did was something called Localization or L-10N. So localization strategy is you find a group of people...you kind of try to get in their mind...you use that to your advantage...so if I wanna blackmail you...I will know your deepest, darkest fears"
"Sophie, 9 yo, has disclosed...domestic violence, sexual grooming, and most recently molestation/rape in her primary residence. Her father is fighting for her life while her abusers pull every resource to get their hands back on her." archive.is/M8A8q#selectio…
"The biological mother, according to Sophie, is a part of the sexual abuse and is encouraging it....We have been dealing with CPS, Law Enforcement, Lawyers, DFPS, Forensic interviews, and several doctors "