Montana Republican legislators rush to the aid of Christopher Columbus, once again

Senator Dan Salomon, a Montana legislator from Ronan, “has never, been so mad”. 

I read Sen. Salomon’s quote in an article about a bill proposed in the 2023 Montana Legislature that would have replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day. The bill died in committee. Again. All the Republicans on the Senate Education and Cultural Resources Committee voted against it.

The bill’s sponsor, Democratic Senator Shane Morigeau representing Missoula, who is a member of the Salish and Kootenai Tribes, opened the hearing by briefly describing atrocities Christopher Columbus and his men directly perpetrated on indigenous people in the West Indies and the Caribbean. What he said wasn’t sensationalistic, it wasn’t untrue, and it wasn’t inflammatory. You can watch it here. Sen. Morigeau simply stated well-known and widely accepted historical facts that came directly from Columbus’s own personal journals and firsthand written accounts of Columbus’s life and exploits.

These historical facts, which anyone can look up, are apparently what made Sen. Salomon so angry. The following is an article excerpt from Montana Public Radio: 

Sen. Dan Salomon, a Republican from Ronan, said the bill’s sponsor killed the bill himself with his description of Christopher Columbus during committee testimony.

“He starts off with, and I think I can quote, with accusing Columbus of rape, beheadings, amputations, slicing torsos into sex trafficking, you can imagine where this hearing went in a hurry. I have never, in my experience, been so mad,” Salomon said.

From my perspective, it would be like getting angry at a descendant of someone who died in the Holocaust for describing what happened to their ancestors. 

Weirdly, Sen.Salomon didn’t seem angry in the hearing and made no comments about the bill after all the testimony was given. All 40-ish people who gave testimony were in favor of changing the holiday to Indigenous People’s Day, including a group of Native youth from the Blackfeet Tribe. No one spoke in opposition.

However, Republican Sen. Daniel Emrich from Great Falls did offer a bizarre line of questioning for Sen. Morigeau in which he asked whether or not indigenous people also committed atrocities and wouldn’t having a day for “them” also be problematic? 

I think it’s important to get the most obvious thing out of the way so we can move on. Christopher Columbus did not discover anything. People were already here and had been here for thousands and thousands of years. 

Columbus wasn’t even the first European to run into this continent with a ship. Here is a direct quote from the book, “Who Was First? Discovering the Americas,” by historian Russell Freedom:

For a long time, most people believed that Christopher Columbus was the first explorer to “discover” America—the first to make a successful round-trip voyage across the Atlantic. But in recent years, as new evidence came to light, our understanding of history has changed. We know now that Columbus was among the last explorers to reach the Americas, not the first (emphasis added).

One of the last, not the first. 

Now that we’re all on the same page regarding historical facts, we can get back to the hearing.

Sen. Salomon’s emotional reaction could be the result of one of two things as far as I can imagine: he either believes that Christopher Columbus was being slandered by Sen. Morigeau, or he believes that it shouldn’t matter what atrocities Columbus and his men committed, and he should be celebrated anyway. I’ll leave a little room for a third option: that the Senator was struggling with internal, moral discomfort and it manifested as anger.  

Let’s put Sen. Salomon aside for a moment, because I don’t think his reaction or opposition to replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day is atypical in Montana. In fact, we know it’s not. All Montana Senate Republicans, except for Jason Small, who is Northern Cheyenne, voted to block the bill from a floor vote, which is essentially voting against it. And for numerous past legislative sessions, they have voted against it.

There are three things I’ve been pondering since this hearing. 

First, it is not uncommon to hear white Montanans say Native Americans should get over what happened to them because “it” happened a long time ago. “It” refers to hundreds of years of war, displacement, death, violence, disease and loss. I’ve heard it firsthand, but this type of sentiment is also all over social media.  

I’ve always been confused by the people who say Native Americans should “get over it and move on.” Meanwhile, white Montanans, especially those of us who are descendants of homesteaders, get to celebrate our history and talk about how it has shaped us. I’m allowed to take pride in my great-grandparents’ homestead in Conrad, MT, but an indigenous Montanan is expected to move on from the past? 

Everyone knows, even if you only have been in Montana for a week, that white Montanans earn some extra political clout if our families have been here for three or four or five generations. That benefit certainly hasn’t been extended to Montana’s indigenous people who have been here over 10,000 years – about 400 generations or more.  

I knew my father’s grandmother, who emigrated from what is now western Russia and homesteaded in North Dakota. Some of my Northern Cheyenne friends’ grandparents fought in the Battle of the Little Bighorn. 

My experience and thinking has been shaped by my Native friends who have shared with me their memories, knowledge, and history of the land. I can’t be ignorant and pretend that colonization and war on this land happened a long time ago. The erasure of Native American experience and history in our state is alive and well. One only has to look at the debacle that was the Visit Billings “Onward Pioneers” tourism campaign to see the complete disregard and disrespect that is shown Native Americans in many of our communities.    

Second, the impacts of colonization, white settlement, and assimilation have not ended. For instance, the repercussions of the U.S. government policy that forced Native kids to attend religious boarding schools are ongoing. Tens of thousands of Native American children were brutally taken from their families and made to attend religious boarding schools where the children were starved and whipped, often sexually abused, and forced into manual labor (what I call slave labor) between 1819 and 1969. Again, these are well-known, accepted, historical facts.

The concept was the brainchild of Brigadier General Richard Pratt. The essence of the Indian boarding school was cultural assimilation, boiled down in a phrase Pratt coined: “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” To accomplish this, children were taken from their parents and often moved hundreds of miles from their home to live and attend school at a boarding school. Government funding enabled religious schools to function. Every essence of Native culture was stripped from these small children, and they lived difficult lives full of school, prayer, work, punishment, and hunger.

Montana State Library

I wonder if Sen. Salomon would also get mad if someone testified about the abuses suffered by Native Americans at these “schools.” Can you imagine having your child forcibly taken from you and sent to a “school” where you knew they would be abused and there was a good chance that you would never see them again? 

Third, Native Americans serve in the U.S. military at higher rates than any other demographic. Since 9/11, nearly 19 percent of Native Americans have served in the armed forces, compared to an average of 14 percent of all other ethnicities. Native American men and women risk their lives for a country that, until very recently, actively tried to eradicate or assimilate them.

Here is my question. 

Should we take one day a year and celebrate Christopher Columbus or should we take that day and instead recognize the culture, connections, contributions, experiences, military service, and lives of the original stewards of this land that we all love? 

Who deserves our collective attention and recognition? 

Could this be one small step in reconciliation? 

For me, the answer is pretty obvious.