AP

PROVIDENCE — At Brown University, it’s goodbye, Columbus.

The faculty voted Tuesday to drop Columbus Day in favor of “Fall Weekend” when a student group urged the change “after controversy arose over the nature of Christopher Columbus’ conquests and treatment of Native Americans.”

The school will celebrate Fall Weekend on the same day as Columbus Day, according to the student group Native Americans at Brown. That name may change in future years, the group said in a news release announcing the development on Wednesday.

The faculty vote, taken by voice, seemed “a clear majority,” said Mark Nickel, director of the Brown News Bureau. He said the faculty has authority over the academic calendar, and that the university will not intervene.

Matthew Thomas, chief sachem of the Narragansett Indian Tribe, said he was surprised.

It was news to him, Thomas said. “For the first time, I’m at a loss for words,” he added. “We are obviously delighted that Brown took this action. I do believe Brown tries to be fair to everyone. I’m not surprised they did it, but it is surprising that something like that would take place in Rhode Island.”

John Brown, Narragansett medicine man in waiting and historical preservation officer for the tribe, said, “The world is catching up to them and people are beginning to see from a historical point of view that Christopher Columbus was no real hero. For the population at large, they would not understand it, so I’m hoping they give an explanation for doing it other than the fact that they have removed his name as a holiday for the sake of the Indians.”

Not everyone welcomed the news.

“I didn’t know Columbus came to continental America — I thought he just went to those [Caribbean] islands,” said Raymond Dettore Jr., national historian for the Sons of Italy and former president of the Italo-American Club in Providence.

“I don’t think this is right,” Dettore said. “Columbus was the one that opened up this part of the world to Western civilization. Columbus showed that the world was not flat. I know there is a question of whether the Vikings came first, but if you landed a man on the moon and kept it secret, it doesn’t count.”

Dettore added, “Why don’t they change the name of Brown — were they not founded by slave traders?”

Anthony Baratta, president of the Sons of Italy’s Commission for Social Justice, said from the organization’s headquarters in Chicago that revisionist histories have cast an unfair pall over Columbus’ deeds.

“We respect the fact that Columbus discovered America. My history books told me he was very friendly to the American Indians. In 1492, on his first voyage, he made friends with the Taino Indians on Hispaniola, now Haiti and the Dominican Republic. He built a fort, Navidad, and left a crew of 40 there. He went back to Spain. When he returned in 1493, his men were slaughtered, massacred, by one of the Taino tribes. That’s when he began to have differences with the Indians.”

Baratta said that as a result of the massacre Columbus sent 500 native prisoners of war back to Spain, where they were sold as slaves.

“That’s what the Spanish did back then,” he said. “That’s where the mystique and misinterpretation of what Columbus has done has evolved into. The stories and the racist facts about Columbus were really false.”

Baratta said President Benjamin Harrison established Columbus Day as a national holiday in 1892, the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s first voyage.

“This was a patriotic holiday,” he said. “I don’t know why the faculty would have chosen this route, because if you really read about Columbus, he brought Christianity to America, brought inventions including the wheel that would help farmers and American Indians plant their crops and help our country prosper. He should be treated as a hero.”

Valentino D. Lombardi, state social justice chairman for the Sons of Italy, said, “I’m surprised, but not shocked, because this has come up at other locations and the Sons of Italy has defended the right to honor Christopher Columbus. We recognized the achievements of a great Renaissance explorer who founded the first European settlement in the New World. It has been said that Columbus matters because after him came millions of Europeans who brought art, music, science, medicine, philosophy and religious principles to America.”

Lombardi added that the organization does not deny that “The Native Americans suffered greatly at the hands of the American government or the Spanish conquistadors or anyone else, but it is untenable to conclude that because of these past injustices the Italian-Americans who want to celebrate Columbus would be denied that right.” Holiday time

 Although Columbus Day is a federal holiday, not all states and cities celebrate it the same way, and for some it is not a legal holiday.

 In California, Berkeley celebrates Indigenous People’s Day instead.

 Hawaii celebrates Discoverer’s Day, honoring the British explorer James Cook, who visited what were then known as the Sandwich Islands in 1779.

 South Dakota calls it Native American Day.

 In the U.S. Virgin Islands, it’s Puerto Rico-Virgin Islands Friendship Day.

 In Virginia, it’s Columbus Day and Yorktown Victory Day, honoring also the victory at Yorktown in the Revolutionary War.

Source: Wikipedia

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