Día de la Resistencia Indígena!

Happy Indigenous People's Day, everyone!

Haida totem poles, Vancouver, Canada
About twenty-five thousand years ago, people discovered America. We settled the continents, figured out the core principles of the local ecology, formed governments, fought wars, established trade routes, and built cities.

Then, five hundred and twenty-two years ago, my ancestors discovered Christopher Columbus.

Globalisation was inevitable. It's reductionist to blame Columbus for what happened next; given the problem of smallpox and other pathogens, any contact between Africa or Eurasia and the Americas was probably going to be messy, even if greed was miraculously out of the equation. Columbus was the butterfly whose wing-flapping started a hurricane, not a demonic entity. At the same time, he didn't discover anything, except the fact that if you pester a wealthy government enough, they might fund an expedition to make you go away, and also that the prevailing Atlantic wind patterns will take you straight from Europe to the Caribbean.

So I am very pleased that a number of municipalities around the United States have turned a rather pointless holiday into Indigenous People's Day (following the example of several South American countries, including Venezuela). To celebrate, here are some excellent Native authors whose fiction and non-fiction writing is definitely worth a read:

Sherman Alexie (Spokane)
Louise Erdrich (Anishinaabe)
Robin Wall Kimerer (Anishinaabe)
Alfredo Véa, Jr. (Yaqui)
Mitch Cullin (Cherokee)
Velma Wallis (Gwich'in)