October 10, 2022 Indigenous Peoples’ Day
A day to reflect on our history in the US beginning with the treatment by Columbus of the Arawak peoples he encountered on Hispaniola in 1492. Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the US (which I used as a text in the DC public school where I taught US History for eleven years) says,
“Columbus reported, ‘The Indians are so naive and free with their possessions that …when you ask for something they have they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with everyone.”
In return for their kindness and welcome, Columbus “rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town…‘Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.’” Zinn, A People’s History of the US, p. 4.
Thus began the 530 years of massacre, enslavement, cruelty and genocide against the Native peoples of the Americas. We owe their descendants true history, their stories to be told widely in our schools, churches, libraries and media…their land, language and culture preserved, honored – and returned.
We could learn much about building equitable beloved communities from the Arawaks.
I write this in the land of the Piscataway, the Anacostan and Pamunkey.
Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends!
Power of Love 
