It's On!

When I was younger and living on the streets, there was an expression whenever a gang fight was going to happen.  It's on!  (Read:  Shit's on!)

Gangs, they were a part of my early life and I ran with some boys that caused a lot of trouble back in the day.  Nothing really notorious, but we controlled a neighborhood and rival gangs got the shit kicked out of them when we found one on our turf.  There was one night in particular in a supermarket parking lot where I witnessed one guy getting beaten with a car muffler.  Ugh.   I dropped out of the scene at 15 after spending a week in a cell with a murderer, but that's a blog for another time.  Ha!

So what's that got to do with the here and now?  Well, it's on.  I've been away for a while and there's been a few things building up.  I haven't had another outlet for all this so here it is.  Ha!  When I started this blogging thing a while back, the first 20 of them flew off the cuff pretty easily.  Well, some time has passed and I'm about to drop another 20.  If you bothered to check out the original line-up, you know I write essays.  If you thought you were going to hear a quick note or two about how bad my day was, you better move on.  If you're interested in what else is out there?  We might have a conversation.

The first thing on my mind today was Columbus Day.  Hate that bastard.  If you're familiar with my earlier writings, you'll know that as a Native American I tend to be a militant SOB.  For Native Americans in general, this is a non-holiday.  We have no reason to celebrate his arrival in what he considered the New World.  In fact, there are a few groups, including the National Congress of American Indians who are trying to get the federal government to change this to Native American Day.  We'll piss off those boys down at the Italian-American dining hall, but hell, we've eaten that share of BS for 500 years.  It's time to turn this around.

Here's one of the most recent opinions on this from Indianz.com:  http://tinyurl.com/3v89xz

It's just the beginning.  I think that in this modern day and age, it's time that the people of this country acknowledge that Columbus didn't discover shit.  There were people here who had lived in the Americas for thousands of years before this white boy and his crew dropped anchor on what they thought was a back door to India.  (I've since made friends with some guys from India and everytime they see me, I get all these questions about being "Indian" in America that they just can't seem to deal with.)  Yeah, Columbus didn't know it, but when he got here, we had a name for ourselves.  My tribe called ourselves Ong-we-ong-weh, but other tribes and Natives of this country all had tribal names that translated to the same thing:  The People.  Ask a Native you know and they'll all tell you the same thing, their tribal name for themselves translates to The People.

Being Non-Native you might think that odd, how almost 600 distinct Indian tribes in the U.S. alone (not to mention Canada, Central and South America), could come up with something that would identify ourselves as The People, but we were "the people" that lived here.  It was a collective mindset that connects our people to this day.  So when some guy from the Mediterranean stumbles upon someplace that has a few million people here, you can imagine how much a non-event Natives consider this.

It only it hadn't gone so badly after he got here.

But it's not about eminent domain or divine providence, whatever your opinion of what happened afterwards, it's about what do we do now.  Wouldn't you agree that after 500 years it's time to recognize the fact that Columbus was wrong?  That while he brought attention to what was here, that he wasn't the reason for it?  That this nation (and the others of this continent) were RED from sea to shining sea before this bastard got lost?

I could go more into what Columbus tried to do after he got here and the activities that his priests recorded.  You may recall Columbus as some glorius figure from third grade history class, but be assured, it was nothing of the sort.  He bares the brunt of being the first to have his name recorded as being the one who brought plague and pestilence and war and holocaust to this country.  There would have been others had he not gotten here when he did, but for all times, it's this guy.

And on a more pleasant note (Hahahahahaha!), Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian brethren.  I'm originally from the Six Nations Reserve in Ohsweken, Ontario but I grew up in the U.S.   I wish I could have gone home for this one.  You never know what you're going to get for dinner when I go home, could be moose meat, venison, bear, who knows.  You have no idea how much I miss the times when life was simple.

And yes, I was born 500 years too late and I don't know who to curse for that.