I celebrated by having a nice conversation with an old friend of mine who is of indigenous ancestry. He told me he celebrated by going into a white guys house, planting a flag and claiming the lands on which the house stood as property of his nation's people.
When we lived closer together, we would celebrate by going to an Indian restaurant and ordering buffalo and maize (corn) but usually had to settle for Chicken Tika Marsala or some such.
Columbus certainly didn't discover the Americas (and thought he'd been to India several times) and open a path or horrific atrocities agains the peoples of these continents, but I'm selfishly glad enough the he opened up to Europeans so that I was able to be born here as an American. Still, a true understanding of our history is so embarassing and shameful that it's no wonder that some folks can't bear to teach even a fraction of it to the children of this country and claim any attempt to do so is part of some radical "woke" agenda. Some people say slavery is the original American sin. What does that make the genocide of the peoples of these lands that preceded the enslavement of kidnapped Africans? The "pre-original" sin?
Gee, that went dark in a hurry, didn't it? I guess I'm depressed over what's happening in Israel and Gaza. And what's continuing to happen in Ukraine. It is all giving me a bit of a dim view of the world at the moment.
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