By Hipolito Munoz, Managing Editor/Publisher
As we move the world to be more caring and inclusive, we need to begin to understand the value of Indigenous People’s Day, which is today. We must continue to fight for the memory of those people that were viciously destroyed by people with a twisted spirituality and morality. Many of the benefactors of Columbus’ atrocities continue to not only ignore the atrocities but to celebrate the violence because of the benefits they inherited. As David Grosso, DC Council Member at Large states, “Columbus enslaved, mutilated and massacred thousands of indigenous People in the Americas.” This tradition of horror as a weapon is still in the hearts of some people in power, and they do not liked to be checked, because they feel part of their greatness is their ability to instill fear in those they hate.
It will always be very difficult for those who benefit from tragedies and from those massacres to choose to empathize with victims of the twisted mentality that was needed to destroy those that welcomed them. How do the descendants of the colonizers and settlers choose to give up the trappings gained from the cruelty their ancestors executed in the natives of the area they “discovered?” Although some will and are doing what they can to separate themselves from their ancestor’s cruelty, most wont.
What is beginning to happen is that the descendants of those victims, who have been reclaiming their story and their spirit are now finding their peers, those that they have inspired. There will never be full inclusion because those that wrecked havoc in the world of the indigenous peoples centuries ago, had exactly what is happening now in mind. It is not an accident that the systems that are now oppressing the indigenous through out the world is strong and continues to protect those that prefer to see indigenous people as less than human for their benefit.
As the celebrations, which recognize the existence and the values of the first peoples’ explode throughout the world, there is a fight happening within the colonizer’s decedent’s hearts, to either acknowledge that the legacy of terror which is part of their legacy through their erroneous and self-serving narcissistic interpretation of Christianity and their acceptance of “manifest destiny” as a tool for conquering peaceful peoples and accept the humanity of all, or for them to continue fighting for a world that they have strived to create, one that only they control.
We are at the beginning of a new paradigm, one that many of the followers of Laura Ingram and her ilk did not expect, the beginning of the end of white supremacist full grip on not only people who benefit from their cruelty but also on the system that maintains their power intact.
