A few weeks back, I wrote an article in the Review titled Columbus Day and revisionist history (Vol. XXVIII, Issue 3). The Review subsequently received a letter to the editor which took issue with my article. The following is the original letter from Samuel Rose ’10.
Mr. Oliver Renick,
I wanted to share with you some of my thoughts in regards to the article that you wrote for the October 15th edition of The Cornell Review entitled “Columbus Day and Revisionist History”.
First, I must take issue with the very nature of the article itself. As can be can reasonably assumed from the opening two paragraphs of your article, you were likely not present at the October 8th rally at Ho Plaza. So initially we have the obvious problem of you attempting to comment on an event that you neither witnessed nor experienced. Instead, what follows is a very oversimplified and problematic summarization and critique of the October 9th article in The Cornell Daily Sun entitled “Rally Decries Crimes of Columbus; Stresses Importance of Native Cultures” by Margo Cohen Ristorucci. Because of this distance from the event itself and a likely biased lense through which you interpreted the situation, there are some serious errors in terms of the issues and ideas that the presenters were trying to convey. I will address these issues subsequently in turn, but as one of the people who helped to organize the event, I do take great issue with this misrepresentation of the event; whether it is ignorantly or intentionally done. I also find it quite odd that while you are reporting on a report about an event to which you did not attend, you then have the audacity to criticize the quality of journalism of the Daily Sun. For me, because of its ridiculous nature, that just takes the cake as a new low in journalistic integrity at Cornell for any newspaper. (continued after the jump)
That point aside, I would now like to address both how the event was portrayed in your article and the reality of the event. The event was actually entitled “Indigenous Day Rally”. In the article you portray the event as though it were purely an ‘anti-Columbus rally’. However, anyone who attended the rally would know that this was not true. The actual purpose of the rally was to challenge the sacred position that Columbus holds in American mythology and with that emphasize the importance of indigenous cultures and societies around the world that have historically been marginalized by the mainstream. And to her credit, I would like to say that I thought that Ms. Ristorucci presented this quite well in her article.
Next, after having not attended the rally and misunderstood the purpose of the rally, you then proceed to take issue with the statements of two Cornell professors as they were quoted in the Daily Sun article. The serious problem here is that you clearly do not understand the context of these professors’ statements because you were not there. I would like to note here that each of these professors spoke for between 5 and 10 minutes and it is not realistic to think that you can understand all that was meant by these statements without the remainder of the speech in which they were given. Also it seems reasonable here to surmise that you do not personally know these two individuals and therefore you cannot know their actual viewpoints as this would require some form of personal interaction or experience with them. I find it quite odd then that you take issue with Professor Cheyfitz’s statements on the genocide committed by Columbus on the indigenous nations of the Caribbean, while fully admitting that Europeans did commit atrocities in the Western Hemisphere. Instead of discussing more in depth the reality of that history you instead twist it into some off-the-wall comment on his teaching method. Would it be wrong here to also assume that you have not taken one of his classes? That part of the article leaves me quite baffled as to the relevance of writing it, and speechless in regards to how to comment on it further. I would instead like to move to your comments on Chefitz’s statements about American genocide and atrocities. I would like to first state that according to dictionary.com, genocide is defined as “the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group”. What is important here is that genocide is more than simply killing people. Instead it is the attempt at the elimination of the existence of that people. A prime example of this American genocide of American Indians is with Indian Boarding Schools as an assimilationist policy where American Indian youth were forcibly taken from their families and forced to attend government run schools where their cultures, religions, and languages were banned and instead they were made to conform to the lower end of mainstream American society. This example perfectly fits this definition of genocide as this policy was deliberate, because it was administered by the government it was of course systematic; and it sought the extermination of a group that can be defined along national, political, racial, and cultural lines. The data that Professor Cheyfitz discussed was meant to show the nature of the American Empire in which we live where wealth and access to services are concentrated amongst the societal elites. And to address your question of “why does everyone want to come here”, I would say simply that for may people it is better to be a part of the empire than be subject to it. Or if I will quote a friend of mine whose parents immigrated here; people want to come here “because they don’t know how bad it is until they get here”.
Next, you took issue with the statements made by Professor Rickard regarding the process by which the Iroquois Confederacy was formed peaceably out of several warring nations. You seem to take her statement as buying into the stereotype of the peace-loving Indian; and in showing that American Indians did commit violence against other American Indians as well as against Europeans you have somehow refuted her remark. Instead she was not saying that at all; nor would any knowledgeable professor or student. Her statement was in the context of her saying that we should value indigenous philosophies, cultures, and histories because there is much that mainstream America and the world can learn from them. It is then that she cites this Iroquois example as a model by which nations who had been enemies can peaceably and equitably work together to a greater collective end.
In your article you also brought up the issue of ‘capital’. I find this to be quite an odd comment as this idea was brought up in neither the Sun article nor the actual rally. However, I will attempt to address your “point”. Yes Native Nations fought with Europeans and other Native Nations for access to resources (of varying kinds) both in the Pre-Columbian periods as well as in the Historical period. This is nothing new to either human history or to Native American history so I question even why you bring up such a topic. In addition to warfare for resources there was also much exchange of resources across the continent in the form of trade. It is known that trade had been occurring for thousands of years in the Western Hemisphere prior to European contact and most of these same trade routes were used in the Historical period for the dispersion of European trade goods across indigenous America. So I would agree whole heartedly that it would be wrong to portray Natives as simply being slaves to colonial forces. However, it would also be quite negligent and inaccurate to ignore the power dynamic that existed between European imperial powers and Native Nations. Native Nations though economic and political agents in their own regard were certainly not equal actors in that greater human drama that we know as European/Western imperialism. Professor Rickard also brought up this topic, albeit indirectly, when she stated that the European powers and the United States actually became wealthy because of the exploitation of the people and the resources that existed in the Western Hemisphere.
You also questioned why program houses were discussed in an ‘anti-Columbus rally’. The purpose of having Ken Glover speak here was to attempt to articulate one of the ways in which this legacy of imperialism and monoculturalism is played out in our local setting. It is no secret that the ethnically based program houses have faced much contention in the Cornell community due to a vocal minority (i.e. the Cornell Review) and an inept university administration. They have not received the proper attention and funding that they need to achieve their intended purpose of fostering greater understanding in the Cornell community in terms of the values of ethnic diversity and awareness. These program houses have thus come to embody the feeling that many people of ethnic minorities have of Cornell’s position on and commitment to diversity within the University. This view being that by not properly supporting these houses, the university is not properly supporting or valuing these communities of people. In his speech, Ken Glover compared the numerous treaties that the United States has broken with Native Nations to the broken faith and failed responsibility that many in the minority communities here at Cornell feel has happened with the Cornell administration. The linking of these two issues was not arbitrary and was in fact quite intentional.
I would also like to point out two other things that you neglected to mention in your article. First, for the rally we had invited the student organization Asian Pacific Americans for Action to speak in order to show that this rally was not simply an ‘Indian’ thing or a ‘Black’ thing but that the legacy of European imperialism and colonialism as exemplified and glorified by holidays like Columbus Day extends to many other areas of the world and their indigenous societies. Lawrence Lan spoke well to this point of drawing similarities in the European imperialist agenda and its application in Asia and the Pacific Islands. To this he mentioned Filipino resistance efforts to colonialism, the American stereotype of Asians as the model minority, and the objectification of Asian women.
The last issue that I wish to address here is your description of our event as ‘revisionist history’ and the negative connotation that has been embedded in this term. I would like to remind you that Columbus Day in and of itself is an example of “revisionist history” in the sense of it being a re-imagining (to use your word) of his initial landing in the Caribbean islands. Hundreds of years after the event, what had been a footnote of history became transformed and glorified by the American cultural and mythological mind. American culture took a man who was not an American and in reality had never even set foot on what became the United States of America and made him into a culture-hero. Columbus Day did not exist as a holiday anywhere in the world until it was made a state holiday by Colorado in 1906. So in reality we were simply trying to ‘re-imagine’ or ‘re-envision’ a holiday and a historical narrative that has already been re-imagined. So in this sense we are trying to re-re-imagine or rather to ‘un-imagine’ this holiday and this historical narrative so that a more accurate portrayal of reality can be seen by mainstream society. This could only lead to a better understanding of the present world and the problems and issues that all people face in it.
Lastly, I would like to object to the Cornell Review’s consistent denigration of the minority communities here at Cornell. As evidenced by this article, it seems that the Cornell Review is more concerned with pushing its own agenda than it is presenting fair and accurate reports. Because of this ignorant or intentional misrepresentation of our event I must ask that you and the Cornell Review apologize to the Native American Students at Cornell, the American Indian community, all participants in the “Indigenous Day Rally”, and the minority community as a whole here at Cornell University.
