{"id":28020,"date":"2010-10-11T12:12:48","date_gmt":"2010-10-11T17:12:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=28020"},"modified":"2017-09-17T00:16:27","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T05:16:27","slug":"re-narrating-columbus-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/10\/11\/re-narrating-columbus-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Re-Narrating Columbus Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

History isn’t fact, but a narrative.\u00a0 Nations narrate their own histories, telling the stories about themselves that they prefer.\u00a0 Holidays are one way in which these stories are told and re-told.<\/p>\n

At www.america.gov<\/a>, the U.S. government describes Columbus Day as a”commemoration” of Columbus’ “landing in the New World” (they astutely avoid the term “discovery”) and initiating a “lasting encounter” between the mis-named “Indians” and Europeans (no mention of genocide or the stealing of land).<\/p>\n

Contesting this particular version of history, an organization calling itself Reconsider Columbus Day<\/a> is asking Americans to adopt an alternative national narrative, one that both acknowledges and emphasizes the oppressive and unjust outcomes of the ongoing “lasting encounter” between American “Indians” and Europeans-now-Americans.
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

The narrative and counter-narrative is an interesting example of how nation-founding memories are not set, but always potentially changing as the national ethos and distribution of power shifts underneath them.<\/p>\n

For more on national memories, see our post comparing the German approach to the Holocaust and the America approach to slavery<\/a>.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

History isn’t fact, but a narrative.\u00a0 Nations narrate their own histories, telling the stories about themselves that they prefer.\u00a0 Holidays are one way in which these stories are told and re-told. At www.america.gov, the U.S. government describes Columbus Day as a”commemoration” of Columbus’ “landing in the New World” (they astutely avoid the term “discovery”) and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23384,253,254,2104,3920,285,1758,1757],"class_list":["post-28020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-history","tag-holidays","tag-knowledgeintelligence","tag-nation-united-states","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-american-indiansaboriginals","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28020"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71324,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28020\/revisions\/71324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}