r/IndianCountry • u/T0macock • 1d ago
Discussion/Question Help an Unc Out: Columbus Day
Aho, she:kon, and a hearty “hey how are ya!?” cousins.
The saga of the south Tip brother continues. You know the story so far. Frybread survivor. All-Skate legend. Volvo arsonist. Ketchup chip disney princess. The man who wears another man’s tear-away pants. Co-architect of the fifty-eight dollar cauldron. Roasted by the Three Sisters and wearer of the Sticker.
So this past Monday was Thanksgiving here in Canada. But down south, for some of my American cousins, depending on the state, the city, and who you ask, it was Columbus Day.
Cousins. Crack a Bepsi. Get comfortable. Because I am about to talk SO much shit about this man.
Monday afternoon, I’m at kokum’s for Thanksgiving dinner. Turkey’s in, kitchen’s full, Leonard’s in the corner “supervising the potatoes,” which means eating them before they’re mashed… Like they’re apples. Fucking guy. My phone buzzes. It’s my cousin from over the river in New York State.
“happy columbus day buddeh, lol”
Then a GIF of Columbus waving from a boat.
Cousins, I put down my book. I went out on the porch. And I called him, and I started a rant that by the end had the whole family on the porch with me, Leonard included, still holding a half eaten potatoapple.
Christopher Columbus: A Résumé of Shithouse-ery
Let’s look at this man’s accomplishments, cousins. Let’s give him a fair hearing. Let’s do a performance review.
Navigation: He was trying to get to India. He hit the Caribbean. He was off by an ENTIRE HALF OF THE MOTHER FUCKING PLANET. And then, and this is the part that I can honestly kinda respect (given my own track record), he refused to admit it. Went to his grave insisting he’d found Asia. That’s like a guy who won’t ask google for directions even though the sign says “Welcome to Ohio” and was on a trip to Toronto.
Geography: People love to say “everyone thought the earth was flat and Columbus proved it was round.” No, cousins. Educated people knew the earth was round. They’d known for almost two thousand years. What Columbus did was get the SIZE wrong, you see. He thought the planet was way smaller than it is. The experts told him he’d run out of food long before he ever reached Asia. They were right, of course. The only reason he and his crew didn’t starve at sea is that there was a whole massive inhabited double continent in the way. Our ancestors saved this man’s life by existing. And how did he say thanks? Oh we’ll get to that.
Naming: Because he thought he was in India, he called the people here “Indians.” Cousins. Five hundred years. We’ve been carrying around a nickname from a guy who failed geography. That’s like getting your nickname from a substitute teacher who’s reading the wrong attendance sheet and then being stuck with it forever. To be fair, Indian food is fucking rad. I’m ok sharing the title with them as long as I get Biryani access out of the deal.
Discovery: He “discovered” a place where millions of people already lived. You can’t discover somebody’s house while they’re sitting on the porch, cousins. That right there is a home invasion. Plus, the Norse had already been here around 500 years earlier anyway. Leif Erikson showed up, looked around, got his ass kicked, and went home. Honestly, the most respectful European visit on record… Excluding that one Scottish guy I bumped into a few years back at a Tim Hortons who bought me a tea after giving him some local tips on things to do. Nice fella. Anyways….
Geography Part Two: Cousins, Columbus never even set foot in what is now the United States. Not once. The Caribbean. Central America. The coast of South America. That’s it. He has a federal holiday in a country he never visited. I’ve been to Buffalo more times than Columbus has been to America. Give ME a holiday. We can have cake.
Management: Spain made him governor of Hispaniola. And he ran it so brutally, with so much cruelty against our cousins, the Taíno people, that in 1500, Spain arrested him and sent him home in chains.
Let that sink in. In the 1490s. The SPANISH. During the INQUISITION. Looked at this man and said “woah, okay, buddy, that’s too much.”
Cousins, you have to work hard to get HR complaints from the Spanish crown in 1500.
The Corn Maze Parallel: And here’s what gets me, personally. I got lost in a corn maze for three and a half hours. I got a sticker that says “I GOT LOST IN THE MAZE!” with a cartoon scarecrow.
Columbus got lost for his ENTIRE CAREER and got a federal (cakeless) holiday, statues, a capital city, a university, and a bunch of streets.
Where’s his sticker, cousins? He’s the original “I GOT LOST IN THE MAZE.” I want a statue of Columbus with a big yellow sticker on his chest. Cartoon scarecrow. Thumbs up. That’s the only monument I’ll accept.
My cousin on the phone was crying laughing. Leonard ate his potato in agreement. And kokum, from the screen door, said the thing that ended it:
“He got lost and then he just stayed. That’s a rude houseguest.”
Cousins. Five hundred years of history. Summed up. I swear: Kokums should write the textbooks. That's a hill I'll die on.
The Question
So we go back inside, and we eat. Good dinner. Kokum’s turkey. Somebody’s three sisters soup. Leonard’s potatoes, what was left of them. Leonard, for some reason, had a plate full of shredded cheese and nothing else. Fucking guy.
And Dax, my little nephew, nine going on thirty, sharp as a skinning knife, puts his fork down and says:
“Uncle. What would it be like if Columbus never came? What if nobody came?”
Cousins, the whole table got quiet (it didn’t really, but let’s pretend.)
And I had a choice. I could give him the safe answer. Or I could do what I do best: tell a story with a lot more confidence than I’ve earned.
Ohhhhh you know what I did.
There’s a name for this, by the way. Indigenous futurism. Our writers and artists have been doing it for years. Imagining futures where we’re not just surviving, but where we’re everywhere, in the stars, in the cities, running the show. I’m no expert, cousins. But I’ve got a captive audience, a full stomach, and a nine-year-old who asked.
So I leaned back, and I said:
“Okay, nephew. Close your eyes. Welcome to Turtle Island. The year is 2026. The Leafs, believe it or not, still suck.”
Turtle Island, 2026
Picture it.
You wake up in a longhouse. But not the old kind. This one’s a kilometre long, made of solar glass and cedar, glowing amber in the morning sun. Your whole clan lives here. Three hundred people. Your kokum is on the top floor. Your aunties are down the hall. You will never in your life be more than a thirty-second walk from someone who will feed you and someone who will roast you. Usually the same person.
Out the window, you see Cahokia. The great city on the Mississippi. Back in the 1200s, by some estimates, it was bigger than London. Now? Left to flourish, it’s a megacity. Mound-scrapers. Pyramids of earth two hundred storeys tall, terraced, covered in gardens. Not ugly glass towers that cook the birds. Living hills you can climb.
You go outside. The streets are quiet because nobody drives. Transit runs along the old trade routes. The ones our ancestors walked and paddled for thousands of years, moving copper from the Great Lakes, shells from the Gulf, obsidian from the mountains. Now they’re mag-lev lines shaped like canoes. You can get from the Atlantic to the Pacific in four hours and the snack cart has bannock.
The buffalo are back, cousins. Thirty million of them. Wildlife corridors run right through the cities. You’re late for school because a herd is crossing the road and you have to wait. Your teacher accepts this. Everybody’s teacher accepts this. “Buffalo” is an excused absence.
Your school teaches in four languages. Your nation’s, your neighbour’s, the trade language, and one you pick for fun. Nobody’s learning their grandmother’s language from an app with a cartoon owl, because nobody ever had to stop speaking it.
The farms are vertical. Three Sisters towers. Corn on the top, beans climbing up through, squash spilling over every balcony. The whole city smells like it’s in the middle of cooking soup.
The economy runs on the potlatch principle. Status isn’t measured by what you’ve got. It’s measured by what you give away. The richest guy in the world isn’t some dickhead with the most rockets. The dragon sitting on a mound of hoarded treasure. It’s the one who threw the biggest feast and fed the most people. Billionaires exist in this world, nephew, but they’re considered deeply, publicly embarrassing. Like a guy at the gathering who brings a pie and eats the whole thing himself in the truck like a tit.
Leonard quietly: “oh, you saw that, eh?”
“Sure did, fella. Was it good?”
“Yup.”
Anyways…The government is the Confederacy. Our Confederacy. The Great Law of Peace, spread across the whole continent. Hundreds of nations, one council fire. And every single decision has to pass one test: how will this affect the next seven generations? Not the next quarter. Not the next election. Not the shareholder. Seven generations. Every law, every dam, every new road, someone stands up and says “and what about the kids two hundred years from now?” and everybody has to answer.
And the clan mothers choose the leaders. And if a leader does a bad job? They take his horns. Publicly. Gone. Fart. Back to being a regular jabroni. Imagine the accountability, nephew. Imagine politicians who are scared of their kokums. That’s the whole system. That’s it. That’s the secret.
The national sport is lacrosse. The Creator’s Game. Played in massive stadiums, two hundred players a side on the old rules, games that last three days and end with everybody eating together, both teams. The Medicine Game, nephew. Healing through a sport. There’s a professional league. There’s a World Cup. The Europeans have a team. They’re not very good. They’re trying, though. They’ve got a guy named Kevin who hugs the opposing players and just hopes everyone is having fun. Atta boy, Kev.
Hockey still exists, cousins. And the Leafs still haven’t won since 1967. Some curses are older and more esoteric than colonization.
And yes, eventually, the Europeans come. As visitors. Tourists, cousins. They have to ask permission at the border. They have to come correct. They bring gifts. They sit at the fire. They listen first. And there’s a visitor centre right at the coast with a big sign, in every language, that says three words:
“Ask an elder.”
Scone dog, in this world, is a sovereign citizen of the Rez Dog Nation (oh man, that’s my next band name. Dibs). He has his own seat on council. He has never once attended a meeting. He considers this a statement.
And Bepsi, cousins? Bepsi exists. Of course it does. It’s sacred.
When I finished, the table was quiet.
Dax’s eyes were open. He’d been listening so hard he forgot to close them.
Leonard wiped his eye. “Mag-lev canoes, cuz,” he whispered. “I could build that.” He could absolutely not build that. He will try. Fuck it, I’ll help.
Mom was at the end of the table. She hadn’t said anything the whole time. And then she said, quietly:
“Yeah, that’s a nice dream.”
And cousins, it is a dream. We can’t go back. The ships came. The schools happened. The losses happened. Reality and history are fixed and all consuming. I get it
But here’s the part I told Dax, and here’s what I’m telling you:
Indigenous futurism isn’t about the past that didn’t happen. It’s not historical fiction… It’s about the future that still can.
Look around that table. Shit, look around this subreddit! The language is coming back, kid by kid, word by word. Kokums are teaching recipes they were never supposed to be able to pass on. Lacrosse is going back to the Olympics. The buffalo herds are growing. There are kids, right now, today, in that longhouse I described, except it’s a rez high school, a library book club, a beat-up community centre with a haunted storage room. They’re the seven generations. They’re who the ancestors were planning for. My Leafs somehow fucked up a Marchenko hattrick and lost in OT.
Columbus got lost… We didn’t. Columbus is dead and gone. We’re not.
We’ve always known exactly where we are. We’re home.
Dax seemed to agree with this and added “Scony would be a terrible councilor.” Dax went back to his turkey.
He’s right.
Pour one out for Christopher Columbus, the most confidently lost man in human history. May he wear his sticker in the afterlife. And drop your Indigenous futurism in the comments, cousins. Tell me your Turtle Island. What do the cities look like? What does your nation’s flag look like on the moon? Dream big.
Mvto, relatives. Know where you are. Know where you’re going. And never let a man who can’t read a map tell you that you’ve been discovered.
P.S. Check out our cousin Waubgeshig Rice’s novel Moon of the Turning Leaves. Book two of his Moon series. What comes after the collapse if we had it our way.
P.P.S. I got a call from the Library Books club boys. Their hockey coach is out this weekend and they need a fill in. Asked if I could step in. I gotta dig out a suit….
Past Stories:
\[Corn Maize](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/uLgab09Dad)
\[Orange Shirt Day](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/YuSBWc7u9y)
\[Haunded House](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/Y3nzSkXkX9)
\[Book Club](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/8zfS1Ynb1N)
\[Library day](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/RDZgTERPoH)
\[Sweat Lodge\](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/xwTSCsSchp)
\[Hot Tub\](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/pUjxilwFEN)
\[Kokum\](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/l0hahrR4Hx)
\[Babysitting\](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/WHcCWUd3UV)
\[Yard Sale\](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/nRZ4eM8Slm)
\[Bingo Night\](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/QEo67nIq2m)
\[Disney Princess\](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/dcziW5TdrG)
\[Tim's Arsonist\](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/IBAixKep6i)
\[Career Change\](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/QKwnSaRXjI)
\[Foraging\](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/kqwVUxJRPu)
\[Frybread Follow-up\](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/E6wbMUSolj)
\[Frybread\](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/bnqjnRA97k)
15
u/MarbleAndMarigold ᏥᏣᎳᎩ, tsitsalagi 1d ago
Pour one out for Christopher Columbus, the most confidently lost man in human history.
I will not, but can add that the only reason he got a holiday in the first place is because the American federal government was trying to apologize for Italian lynchings.
As someone who is Italian in addition to Cherokee, I think we should elect an Italian someone – anyone – else to get their own holiday: Joe Pesci. Joe DiMaggio. Enrico Fermi. Hell, the Fonz. (I would’ve said do as the Irish do and just party on the patron saint’s day, but that’s two days after St Paddy’s and zeppole on a hangover is a bad combo.)
6
5
u/Dry_Inflation_1454 1d ago
Galileo the scientist is a good idea, he even stood up to the Catholic church when they didn't like his findings about the universe. A far better role model for Italians than Columbus ever was.
5
u/T0macock 1d ago
Galileo is a fuckin gangsta. Like, yeah, we talk about how smart he was. If we taught kids about his balls of absolute titanium, I think he'd be held in higher regard.
1
u/ToddBradley 1d ago
The Fonz is Jewish
4
9
u/scratchearth Anishinaabe 1d ago
Hi Uncle! Uncle Waubgeshig’s books are real good — real scary, too. Especially Moon of the Crusted Snow to me ‘cause I knew where it was going by the old stories but by then it was already dark out, everybody else was asleep, and I still had to go brush my teeth. Scariest walk to the bathroom ever.
6
u/T0macock 1d ago
I loved the story and vibe behind Moon fo the Crusted Snow but found the writing, especially in the beginning, a bit clunky.
It's absolutely worth a read if anyone is looking for a Fall of Civilization themed read that actually feels semi-realistic in terms of scope.
3
u/scratchearth Anishinaabe 1d ago
Yeah, I felt you could definitely tell it was a first time novel in some places. I also feel it could be adapted to the screen real well (that part where the boys come back from college in the south and talk about what was going on there was a whole episode of a tv show in itself in my mind).
When it comes to quality of writing, nobody beats Richard Wagamese for me yet.
2
u/T0macock 1d ago
Stephen Graham Jones is my go to. One of those things where I read his work and think "Man, I wish i could write like that Unc."
9
u/ceabe 1d ago
I have CHILLS. "The future that still can" is the reason I do everything I do. Thanks for this one.
2
u/T0macock 1d ago
Always moving towards a brighter future, cuz. We may not see it, but future nieces and nephews will be walking our dream.
4
u/Dry_Inflation_1454 1d ago
Great post Unc, everything you said about Indigenous futurism is doable, and that's encouraging,it inspires perseverance to keep going onward regardless of the news.
2
u/T0macock 1d ago
Our community and family will always sail under mass media radar unless they find something exploitable.
The strives in language preservation and moves towards sustainable, heritage cultivation and land upkeep aren't newsworthy in their eyes.... And I'm ok with that.
But that means it's up to us to send up the smoke signal of good news.
1
3
u/MacawIsland 1d ago
Looking forward to the Hockey story.
In the Memphis area the only buffalo we have are caged in a gated area. I do wish I could let them be free. Though I know where I'd end up if I got caught.
2
u/T0macock 1d ago
I'll fax you a pair of bolt cutters, cuz! Haha
The time will come. Maybe not while we're around, but our nieces and nephews will be there. That's a win.
1
u/MacawIsland 1d ago
Aye, my daddy's favorite tools. I know how to use them. This exchange will be used in the court proceedings. 😅
While we are at it I think we need to do away with all sorts of industry that harms the land. Drezus is a great artist.
3
u/PsychologyGuilty1460 1d ago
Powerful words. Powerful vision. May they carry power wherever they go. May you build a powerful voice.
May all your indigenous futurists have all the confidence and success Columbus had but never earned.... just to start with.
4
u/Veriaamu 16h ago
I have some Taino ancestry & just want to add - the only reason public sentiment was swayed in Spain about the treatment of the natives of Boriken (Puerto Rico) was because of a piece of literature written by the Spanish Dominican friar and bishop Bartolomé de las Casas in 1542. Previous to that the Spanish public was not aware of the war crimes and the sordid details of what Spain & the crews working under the Crown was actually doing to the Taino. It caused a massive public outcry. I've always wondered how the families of the Spanish men on those crews felt when they found out the atrocities their male family members were doing abroad. if anyone wants to read it, Penguin Classics has a book you can get or you can read it for free online through Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20321
Just a warning, it's incredibly detailed so it's not an easy book to emotionally power through for anyone with half a soul.
And not that I want to show any kindness to CC but to be fair - he didn't like his crews at all and they didn't like him. There were a number of instances where they just kind of did whatever the fuck they wanted and he couldn't control them one way or another.
For example, CC recorded how the Spanish men were attracted to the hairlessness of Taino women (pretty standard trait among North American Native genetics whereas Europeans/Middle Easterns are some of the hairiest human populations) and later documented that the men were seeking out girls around 8 years old to bring back to Spain as "wives". I've never found anything conclusive about their social practices in this way, but I doubt the Taino thought 8 was an appropriate age for marriage or sexual activity for little girls. He doesn't condemn or support it in his language, he just reported it as such. I think that illustrates this was a widespread mentality of being indifferent to abuse towards the Taino, especially Taino women regardless of class or rank because the crew heartily contributed to it without direct instruction to do so.
17
u/Riothegod1 1d ago
If anyone in the family is a fan of Tabletop Roleplaying Games, “Coyote and Crow” is a must-buy for any fan of indigenous futurism.
Makasing, Azayang, and Abayang (North, Central, and South America) were cut off from Europe by a meteor impact that caused a cataclysmic ice age. But it also brought something from the stars, a gift from the spirits, that seemed to have a mutagenic effect on life.
The game takes place 710 years later now, technology evolved on a unique trajectory and Makasing alone has 5 nations trying to prove their superiority over their neighbours: The Freelands of Cahokia, The Haudenosaunee Confederacy, The Keetoowagi Federation, The Diné Republic, and The Ti’Swoq Alliance. There’s even 6 if you count the northern expanses of Azayang’s Ezcan Empire.