Courtesy Sam Deloria
Should Columbus Day be abolished? Should Calhoun College’s name be changed? What is historical amnesia, what is the pursuit of truth, and how are they tied to New Haven?
Tom Ficklin is trying to find the answer. ‘
Picking up a thread from previous shows on WNHH radio, the host took Monday morning’s Columbus Day edition of “The Tom Ficklin Show” to explore how the holiday is viewed in an era where, young, women, and black and brown voters have begin to speak about race and revisionist history in a politically agent and more widely distributed way. Speaking with Sam Deloria, a proud member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the director of the American Indian Graduate Center since 2007, he tried to get to the heart of the issue. His starting place: Deloria’s education at Yale. From there, the duo was able to expand the discussion prodigiously.
“Yale did not have a tradition of educating Indian students … but I was qualified,” Deloria said when asked. “This was not a matter of them taking me off a horse during a buffalo hunt — I was well qualified. I was more qualified than legacies like Bush. It’s a complicated just like today’s Columbus Day thing … it involves your identity and your consciousness. How does your consciousness define who you are?”
“Who the hell are outsiders? We’re the people who welcomed Columbus,” he added. “It’s important that people fight for the share of the American consciousness that we are comfortable with.”
To listen to the episode, click on the audio above.
We need AT LEAST one holiday to honor the native people of this continent. That it should replace a holiday which honors a questionable legacy seems appropriate.