The Other Pirates
A perspectival view, from Kurt Vonnegut:
"Teachers of children in the United States of America wrote this date on blackboards again and again, and asked the children to memorize it with pride and joy: 1492.
The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them."
Labels: booty, Columbus, native americans, original americans, potc, sea pirates 1492
posted by Lisa at 2:28 PM
4 Comments:
i often commemorate columbus day by reminding people that it was on that day, 1492, columbus, while lost at sea, was rescued by native americans.
columbus was found by the arawak nation.
within three years, the arawak did not exist as a people, or a culture.
MB,
It's a shame that they disappeared as a culture before they got a chance to eat government supplied fat foods and before they got tax free ciggies. If they had hung on they could've gotten their very own casinos. But hey, they got their names in the history books.
Bob Dylan said it best in -God On Our Side. I also like Buffie St. Maries takes on the topic.
jim
jim
I think the main problem with Columbus is not so much him as the man who caused the fall of so many native Americans, but those who came behind him, those we call the Conquistadors.
But because Columbus is the navigator who brought them here...
So, now, today, in our veins flows the blood of the American Indian, the Spainish Conquistador and the US Cavalrymen.
Perhaps, the errors of our forefathers will not be repeated...then again, perhaps, we'll just improve them to a harsher degree.
I would like to think we have a choice in the matter...and if so, I hope we choose...wisely.
The past is done, it's time to move on, but it is good not to forget the past lest we repeat the same...errors.
Sheerah,
As always, you are a deep thinker. I was merely amused by the rhetorical flourish: their pirates, bad; our pirates, good.
Perspective is all.
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