When my daughter, Rachel, was 4, she asked about Columbus Day. I explained, “My teachers told me that Christopher Columbus discovered America, but it’s not true.”
“Why would teachers lie?” I was not ready for Rachel to learn about the man who raped, stole, enslaved, murdered and brought diseases that decimated tribal populations. I did not explain how white supremacist settler-colonizers continued to characterize Indigenous people as ignorant savages to justify settler expansion. And I didn’t tell her that the more than 6,000 places in the U.S. named after “Columbus,” honor a man who never set foot in North America. “How could Columbus discover America when people had already been living here for thousands of years? Let’s call this day, ‘NOT Columbus Day,’” I suggested.
Twenty-seven years later I text her, “Happy NOT Columbus Day.”
Today, rather than observing a holiday based on a false narrative, 10 states honor the Native people who have been here for 10,000-plus years. Massachusetts is not one of them. The Massachusetts bill creating Indigenous Peoples Day was favorably reported out of committee too late to be voted on by the Legislature. In western Massachusetts, Amherst, Easthampton, Holyoke, and Northampton have replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day, but how do we make Indigenous Peoples Day meaningful, instead of just a long weekend for leaf-peeping or taking advantage of automobile and furniture sales?
The approach of Indigenous Peoples’ Day challenged me to consider what it means to live on stolen land. I’ve walked in Easthampton’s Nonotuck Park many times, hiked the Pocumtuck Ridge Trail in Deerfield, and cycled the Norwottuck Rail Trail to Amherst for years, without learning the origins of their Indigenous names. Why? Why are streets in cities and towns named after Native peoples; like Wamponaug and Algonquin Avenues in Hadley? Why is the fertile Connecticut River Valley, where Native peoples fished, farmed, and hunted for millenia named The Pioneer Valley, honoring white settlers who uprooted the Abenaki, Massachusett, Mohican, Nipmuc, Pawtucket, Pentucket, Pocumtuck, and Wamponoag, occupying their ancestral homelands. (Sandra Matthews, Occupying Massachusetts, 2022)
I recently attended a book launch for Sandra Matthews’ collection of photographs, facts, and essays entitled, “Occupying Massachusetts: Layers of History on Indigenous Land.” The evocative photographs of ancient and modern shelters on local landscapes pushed me to contemplate what it means to live on stolen land. I imagined the tribal people of the past, who nurtured the same earth for millenia, that after 400 years of settler occupation is on the brink of destruction. Where are their descendants now? Photographs of historical markers raised more questions. Why do markers and monuments continue to document history from the settler-colonist perspective? A Civil War monument from 1867, its 2019 restoration funded by the Deerfield Academy Class of 1969 and the Massachusetts Community Preservation Act still reads, “This monument stands upon the old meeting house hill…within the limits of the old fort….one of the chief defenses of the early settlers against the attacks of the savage Indians.”
A story in the Gazette (Oct. 1) described a new exhibit at the Springfield Science Museum entitled, “We’re still here,” “… designed to remind visitors that, indeed, Native peoples today are part of Western Massachusetts and modern America in general.” The myth that Native people are long gone harms everyone. The Connecticut River Valley is alive with Native activism that is bringing Native and non-Native people together to try “to heal the injustice.” Montague Native David Brule (Nehantic, Narragansett, Huron Wendat descendant) leads the Nolumbeka Project. Depicting more accurately the history of our region’s Native peoples, preserving “ancient Indigenous sites,” and acting as a “bridge between cultures and between past and future,” (Matthews) the Project’s website is rich with information, including local events where all are welcome. (Nolumbeka.org)
River Valley Co-op joined the Nolumbeka Project’s successful effort in 2021 to halt the construction of a roundabout in Northampton to preserve remains of an ancient Indigenous site that the construction would have destroyed. In 2004, officials from Montague and Turners Falls, gathered with Native people for a reconciliation ceremony to help their communities heal from the Great Falls (Peskeompsut) Massacre where 300 Native non-combatants were murdered, in the village named after the massacre’s leader, Captain William Turner.
The Manifesto of The Landback Movement seeks, “the reclamation of everything stolen from the original peoples.” (landback.org) Noted for its demands that the federal government return the Black Hills of South Dakota, which include Mount Rushmore, to the Sioux Nation, the appointment of Deb Haaland as the first Native Secretary of the Interior, has rekindled the hope for return of federal lands to their rightful owners. Locally, the lease on the State-owned Lampson Brook Farm in Belchertown expires in 2023 and Nipmuc leaders want this piece of their ancestral homeland returned in order to build an “agri-hood,” a planned community to raise crops and house Native and non-Native low-income families. So far, it’s been an uphill battle, in spite of strong local support to rematriate it back to the Nipmuc.
“Justice and healing will not come through a sweeping proclamation but rather by our individual efforts on a small scale that could build progressively to a new coexistence.” David Brule
Educate, donate for land reclamation, advocate, connect with Native peoples!
Wishing everyone a meaningful Not Columbus Day.
Sara Weinberger of Easthampton is a professor emerita of social work and writes a monthly column. She can be reached at columnists@gazettenet.com.