Like many conscientious Americans, we didn’t celebrate Columbus Day yesterday. It’s just hard to celebrate someone who claimed to “discover America” when we know for a fact that America was first discovered in 2008 by Michelle Obama.
Sure, his expedition led directly to the settlement and permanent foothold of Western civilization in the Americas–the civilization upon which the United States is founded. But did you know, dear reader, that there were actually people living here before Columbus?
And so the façade crumbles.
This is why yesterday was also Indigenous Peoples Day, to celebrate the people who actually lived in America before Columbus even got here and stole America from them.
But we don’t celebrate that, either.
Of course, we used to celebrate it. We’d spend the day acting upset about the Redsk*ns, watch some hoop dancers, and definitely not watch the animated Peter Pan. But then we realized a terrible truth.
There were people here before the indigenous peoples.
The indigenous tribes of America had actually taken it from the peoples before them–the Clovis people. Of course, America is too racist to celebrate Clovis American Day. But we celebrated it.
Because the Clovis peoples originally migrated from Asia, we’d celebrate it by eating fortune cookies and pretending that Awkwafina is funny. But then we realized–if the Clovis peoples migrated from Asia, that meant that they’d stolen America from someone else.
So I did a deep research dive to find out who the truest Americans were, the people I should really be celebrating on Columbus Day. My patriotism depended upon it. And I discovered that there were actually people who’d migrated to America thousands of years earlier, before the Clovis people. But of course, Americans don’t celebrate Pre-Clovis Paleo-American Day–not like they should.
Pre-Clovis Paleo-American Day has been good to our family. It’s just and appropriate to curl up next to a gas-powered fire after a long day of hunting red meat at the local Smith’s. But then I realized that the Pre-Clovis Paleo-Americans had also stolen America from someone else.
Living in Utah, I’m uniquely exposed to specific evidence of beings that lived in the Americas long, long ago–beings who left a record of their existence buried in the very dirt of America itself.
And that’s why instead of celebrating Columbus Day, my family celebrates Utah Raptor Day.
