This year's Columbus Day was met with the expected e-card Facebook postings and furloughs around Madison. But for many American Indians at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and around Wisconsin, the state’s recognition of Columbus Day is a symbol of the competing narratives surrounding America’s foundation.
“The historical myths surrounding Columbus are not only factually incorrect, but frame the human history of North America from only one perspective among many,” Sawyer Denning, who is a member of the Wunk Sheek American Indian student organization on campus, said.
In years past, Wunk Sheek, under the advisement of School of Education recruitment and retention specialist Aaron Bird Bear, lobbied city and county officials to recognize the state holiday Columbus Day as “Indigenous People’s Day.”
Each year since 2005, the city Council has voted to uphold the resolution, with the exception of this year. Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, said the failure to include the “customary resolution” is an “embarrassment.”
“We simply forgot this year,” Verveer said.
Verveer, who has backed and co-sponsored the resolution in previous years, added that for the past few years, the resolution had been passed without formal request from Wunk Sheek.
The resolution was met with resistance from some Italian-American community members in 2008, who asked that Columbus Day be co-declared as “Christopher Columbus Day” in recognition of Italian-Americans’ contributions to society, according to Verveer.
Verveer said no voices dissented the “twin resolutions.” The goal of these types of resolutions, he said, is to pay tribute to citizens in an inclusive way, and to allow for public discussion of these issues.
To Denning, the controversy surrounding Columbus Day is just a window into deeper issues facing American Indian students on campus.
Wunk Sheek lost its General Student Services Funding in a Student Services Finance Committee ruling in 2009 and has not applied for student funding since. Although no longer a registered student organization, Wunk Sheek is still active in planning one or two events each academic year. One event is the Annual Pow-Wow, a festival that demonstrates traditional arts, crafts and music of indigenous students.
American Indians should have the opportunity to socialize on the UW campus, to understand the wider world and in turn be understood via events like the Pow-Wow, according to Denning.
“Indians also bring to the UW system desired numbers for diversity,” Denning said. “But what are Indians receiving in return? It is still looking like a colonial relationship: the value of our identity is extracted—as well as our cash for tuition–but no value is returned.”
