About 525 years ago, Christopher Columbus brought white supremacy to the islands of the Caribbean. It wouldn’t be long before it made its way to Turtle Island (aka North America) where it soon became the law of the land. This extended the European tradition of enshrining every human right and beyond to white men who own property (and by property I mean land, people, wives, children, etc.) while denying those rights and privileges to everyone else. End result, the worst and yet least talked about genocide in human history. Despite this, or perhaps perversely because of this, President Franklin Roosevelt designated the second Monday of October Christopher Columbus Day in 1937.
Fast forward to 2016 and the United States elects a president that completely embodies the principles of white supremacy that Columbus unleashed on the indigenous people of the Americas. So, no surprise that the Treaty of Fort Laramie that the Sioux rely on to protect their reservation is being ignored by Energy Transfer Partners as they build the Dakota Access Oil Pipeline a stone’s through from their water supply.
While the electoral college has helped to keep the philosophical descendants of Columbus in power, the descendants of all those others tended to side with the Sioux. In an effort to stop construction of the pipeline, Sioux Water Protectors, along with many Native Nations and non-Native allies staged months of continuous protest at the Standing Rock Reservation. The pipeline might have been stopped had we elected someone other than Donald Trump. On the other hand, maybe not. President Sanders would have either halted construction or routed it away from the Missouri River, but President Clinton?
If elected officials consistently put the desires of corporations over the needs of their constituents, does that make them philosophical descendants of Christopher Columbus? His atrocities were committed to enrich the Spanish crown? The most that non-aristocrats could hope for was that some of that wealth would trickle down to them. Shaking the legacy of Columbus and the white supremacists who followed him is the job of a lifetime not a single campaign. No one knows that better than the indigenous people of the Americas.
So, we should not be surprised that the Sioux Nation not only continues to fight to protect their water, they also continue to fight for the many things they need on the reservation. But they’re not just fighting to insure that their water doesn’t end up contaminated, they also continue to fight for the many things they need on the reservation. The tenacity of the Sioux Nation, and indeed all of the Indigenous nations who survived the genocide following Columbus’ arrival, provide us all with excellent lessons in tenacity. Those who are new to the fight against white supremacy should take heed.
The video below of the 2016 Columbus Day demonstration by the DC Standing Rock Coalition is a reminder that victories can be won on many levels.
