On Columbus Day, students at Binghamton University will have the opportunity to hear why some believe the famous explorer, Christopher Columbus, should be stripped of his heroic commemoration.
Paulette Steeves, a graduate student and president of the Native American Student Association, who is set to host an Oct. 10 forum titled “Enlightenment on Columbus Day,” poses the question: Why would we have a national day to celebrate “this guy”?
Steeves, who plans to describe Columbus as “the Hitler of the Americas” in her forum, hopes that students will question the celebration of the man who, according to her, brought European imperialism, slavery and genocide to the Americas, and was ultimately arrested for atrocities toward the Native American people.
“Nobody speaks about or knows about the American Holocaust,” Steeves said.
She hopes that identifying the atrocities committed against the Native American people by Columbus will encourage the students to not only reject the celebration of the holiday, but to question and pierce through what she calls “the rhetoric and dogma of language” that has been taught in history classes throughout America.
Steeves pointed out that at Brown University, students motivated the administration to change the name of Columbus Day. They now have a Monday off for “fall weekend.”
The forum will be from noon to 6 p.m. in Room 220 of the University Downtown Center located at 67 Washington St.
Additional speakers at the event will include Michael Carpentier and Andrew Curley, Ph.D. candidates for anthropology and sociology at Cornell University; John R. Sosa, an author and professor of anthropology at SUNY Cortland and Dr. Robert Spiegelman, professor of sociology at CUNY who is on the speakers list of the New York Council for the Humanities.
Spiegelman plans to look at the history of the treatment of Native Americans from a more ecological perspective. He said he will examine the “impact on nature in the encounter between European discoverers and the indigenous discovered.”
Spiegelman said the European treatment of Native Americans and their land has lasting impacts today.
“Traditional indigenous values have an urgent role to play in preserving the future,” he said.
Steeves, a molecular anthropology major, received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Arkansas before utilizing her Clark Fellowship at Binghamton to receive her master’s degree. A woman of Cree heritage, Steeves grew up in a remote community of the Salish tribe in British Columbia.
For the past few years, Steeves has tirelessly fought to achieve equal rights for American Indian people, as well as to find and spread the truth about their culture. As an anthropologist and an archaeologist, Steeves has done a great deal of research to debunk many of the commonly believed myths about Native American culture.
In addition to coordinating the forum, Steeves contacted Binghamton city officials to try and motivate them to change the name of Columbus Day in the city.
— Robert Bellon contributed to this report.