REWRITING HISTORY

To write this entry on the blog I actually did some research on Google for find some other look at how people have been rewriting history but could not find anything I could actually use.


The lords Prayer as said in a Protestant church is very different from the same prayer said in a Catholic Church and is never muttered at all in a Mormon Church.


To make old stories relevant to people today many old stories are being rewritten and that goes for history as well. The problems with rewriting history is two fold.


1. It can change the actual history making event to either a smaller role in history or it can glorify it.


2. It can have a domino affect in that it can affect how we view a certain group of people affected by the event.


Several years ago in Denver there was an annual parade for Columbus Day, it was a celebration for all Italian Americans because Christopher Columbus was an Italian. The following appears on www.dickshovel.com/colum.html


The following appeared When Taino Indians saved Christopher Columbus from certain death on the fateful morning of Oct. 12, 1492, a glorious opportunity presented itself.
The cultures Europe of and the Americas could have merged and the beauty of both races could have flourished.
Unfortunately, what occurred was neither beautiful nor heroic. Just as Columbus could not, and did not, "discover" a hemisphere that was already inhabited by nearly 100 million people, his arrival cannot, and will not, be recognized as a heroic and celebratory event by indigenous peoples.
Unlike the Western tradition, which presumes some absolute concept of objective truth, and consequently, one "factual" depiction of history, the indigenous view recognizes that there exist many truths in the world and many legitimate recollections of any given historical event, depending on one's perspective and experiences.
From an indigenous vantage point, Columbus' arrival was a disaster from the beginning. Although his own diaries indicated that he was greeted by the Taino Indians with the most generous hospitality he had ever known, he immediately began the enslavement and slaughter of the Indian peoples of the Caribbean islands. As the eminent Columbus biographer Samuel Eliot Morison admits in his book, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Columbus was personally responsible for enslavement and murder of indigenous peoples. He was personally responsible for the design and operation of the encomienda system that tied Indians as slaves to the lands stolen from them by the European invaders.
As detailed in the American Heritage Magazine (October,1976), Columbus personally oversaw the genocide of the Taino Indian nation of what is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Consequently, this murderer, despite his historical notoriety, deserves no recognition or accolades as a hero; he deserves no respect as a visionary; and he is not worthy of a state or national holiday in his honor.
Defenders of Columbus and his holiday argue that indigenous peoples unfairly judge Columbus, a 15th century actor, by the moral and legal standards of the late 20th century. Such a defense implies that no moral or legal constraints applied to individuals such as Columbus, or countries, in 1492. As Roger Williams details in his book, The American Indian in Western Legal Thought, not only were there European moral and legal principles in 1492, but they largely favored the rights of indigenous peoples to be free from unjustified invasion and pillage by Europeans.
Unfortunately, the issue of Columbus and Columbus Day is not easily resolvable with a disposition of Columbus, the man. Columbus Day as a national, and international, phenomenon reflects a much larger dynamic that promotes myriad myths and historical lies that have been used through the ages to dehumanize Indians, justifying the theft of our lands, the attempted destruction of our nations, and the genocide against our people. Since the 15th Century, the myth of Columbus' discovery has been used in the development of laws and policies that reek of Orwell's doublespeak: theft equals the righteous spread of civilization, genocide is God's deliverance of the wilderness from the savages, and the destruction of Indian societies implies the superiority of European values and institutions over indigenous ones.
Columbus Day is a perpetuation of racist assumptions that the Western Hemisphere was a wasteland cluttered with savages awaiting the blessings of Western "civilization." Throughout the hemisphere, educational systems perpetuate these myths - suggesting that indigenous peoples have contributed nothing to the world, and, consequently, should be grateful for their colonization and their microwave ovens.
As Alfred Crosby, Kirkpatrick Sale, and Jack Weatherford have illustrated in their books, not only was the Western Hemisphere a virtual ecological and health paradise prior to 1492, but the Indians of the Americas have been responsible for such revolutionary global contributions as the model for U.S. constitutional government, agricultural advances that currently provide 60 percent of the world's daily diet, and hundreds of medical and medicinal techniques still in use today.
If you find it difficult to believe that Indians had developed highly complex and sophisticated societies, then you have been victimized by an educational and social system that has given you a retarded, distorted view of history. The operation of this view has also enabled every country in this hemisphere, including the U.S., to continue its destruction of Indian peoples. From the jungles of Brazil to the highlands of Guatemala, from the Chaco of Paraguay to the Supreme Court of the United States, Indian people remain in a perpetual state of danger from the systems that Christopher Columbus began in 1492.
Throughout the Americas, Indian people remain at the bottom of every socioeconomic indicator, we are under continuing physical attack, and are afforded the least access to economic, political, or legal redress. Despite these constant and unbridled assaults, we have resisted, we have survived, and we refuse to surrender any more of our homeland or to disappear into the romantic sunset.
To dignify Columbus and his legacy with parades, holidays and other celebrations is intolerable to us. As the original peoples of this land, we cannot, and will not, countenance social and political festivities that celebrate our genocide. We are embarking on a two- pronged campaign in the quincentenary year to confront the continuing racism against Indian people.
First, we are advocating that the divisive Columbus Day holiday should be replaced by a celebration that is much more inclusive and more accurately reflective of the cultural and racial richness of the Americas. Such a holiday will provide respect and acknowledgement to every group and individual of the importance and value of their heritage, and will allow a more honest and accurate portrayal of the evolution of the hemisphere. It will also provide an opportunity for greater understanding and respect as our societies move ahead into the next 500 years. Opponents to this suggestion react as though this proposal is an attack on ancient time-honored holiday, but Columbus Day has been a national holiday only since 1971 - and in 1991, hopefully, we can correct the errors of the past, moving forward in an atmosphere of mutual respect and inclusiveness.
Second, and related to the first, is the advancement of an active militant campaign to demand that federal, state, and local authorities begin the removal of anti-Indian icons throughout the country. Beginning with Columbus, we are insisting on the removal of statues, street names, public parks, and any other public object that seeks to celebrate or honor devastators of Indian peoples. We will take an active role of opposition to public displays, parades, and celebrations that champion Indian haters. We encourage others, in every community in the land, to educate themselves and to take responsibility for the removal of anti-Indian vestiges among them.
For people of goodwill, there is no better time for the re-examination of the past, and a rectification of the historical record for future generations, than the 500th anniversary of Columbus' arrival. There is no better place for this re-examination to begin than in Colorado, the birthplace of the Columbus Day holiday.
Russell Means and Glenn Morris wrote this position statement in 1991 on behalf of the American Indian Movement of Colorado,1574 South Pennsylvania St., Denver, CO
Consequently the Columbus Day parade has been canceled to appease the AIM. There is no record showing Italians did any thing to the American Indian and yet because the rewriting of history by Russel Means the Italians are blamed for the enslavement and murders of many Native Americans.
Any time a group of people want to make an impact they can simply do so by what I call camouflaged change. When a person rewrites a fairy tale to make it more politically correct it changes the perception of those who read the story. Sometimes changes made to one thing can have an affect on something else. If you are going to work and you are required to make a detour through a street you never saw before you may make this same trip later after the detour is gone because it is a more enjoyable ride than the old route. If someone makes a small change to a history book someone else may take what was written and use it as a reference for another book down the road. Thus we start a domino affect. Truth is actually the process of what we see. Two different people may have two separate believes because of the things they have seen and experienced. A little girl in Germany in 1938 may see a different world than another little girl all because of their religion. A white school boy in 1950 Arkansas would have a different view of the world than a little black school boy in the same town.
Reading Shakespeare or even Sherlock Holmes is difficult for modern day Americans because we do not talk the same way they did way back then. When a movie is made of World War II the way Germans and Japanese are portrayed depends on when the movie was made as well as by what country. A recent movie about the attempt to kill Adolf Hitler by German Army officers had everyone talking in a German accent except for Tom Cruise. An old PBS mini series called I Claudius had all the actors speaking with a British Accent and the joke at the time was that the one thing I learned about Rome from this mini series was that the Romans spoke with a British Accent.
How is it possible that the King James version of the Bible and the Catholic version are so different? As far as that goes why were certain books included in the Bible and other not included. When people rewrite history most of the time it is to support their specific agenda and when we read these history books we need to keep all this in mind. The problem here is the fact that elementary school kids do not have that luxury and over a period of time certain historical facts are deleted or changed very slowly from the history books.
I guess the best thing we can do is not believe everything we read and read several versions of the same thing to give us a better round impression of what we call history.
Most of the things I have learned in life about history comes not from my school years of dry history learning dates and names but historical fiction. But fiction is fiction but at the same time we can get a better grasp of how these historical times affected people. Keep in mind that history is not just names and dates but is sort of like a big line of dominoes and as the dominoes fall they knock down the next domino in line. The things that we take for granite now at one time did not exist. Every change that has happened in history affects the way we think and act today.