Christopher Columbus monument vandalized political reasons

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I do believe Columbus opened the floodgates to the near-genocide of the Native American people, but vandalism- no matter what the motivation- is wrong. I believe statues etc. should be framed in a proper historical context.

There are several towns and a country named after Columbus. Renaming them all would be costly and confusing.

Now that some states have banned Columbus Day, and Christopher Columbus statues are being removed, I have a compromise solution. Keep the day as a holiday, and replace the Culumbus statues with statues of Leif Erikson. -- Happy belated Leif Erikson Day!

Also, as an aside, the statues of Leif Erikson must not be ruined with wings or horns on the helmets, aas is the one of him on the Minnesota Capitol grounds.

If they are tearing down monuments to "racists" then how come Malcom X isnt up on the block?

In New Zealand, there was the same tendency when I was growing up to ascribe "discovery" to Europeans like Abel Tasman (sighted NZ in 1642) and James Cook much later (1769), (the Englishman James Cook was usually cited as the European discoverer of New Zealand and the Dutch Tasman ignored, a startling piece of revisionism to please the English colonists in New Zealand in the 19th century), and that myth is still heard occasionally now. Both these accounts completely ignored the real discoverers centuries before, who happened to be another colour. The Empire ambitions of the English and other relics of European colonisation in New Zealand tend to preserved only in museums now, (rightly so, as they are of historical interest) rather than as statues that continue to represent the colonialist myths and one-sided representations in public spaces.

For a long time there was another colonialist myth that the pre-European voyagers who came across the Pacific in canoes arrived here "accidentally" because the wind blew them here, which is now known to be completely false, though the accidental myth was used to embellish the European discovery narrative.

Columbus was financed to find riches for Spain, and the atrocities committed to secure those riches make very grisly reading, though they tend to have been concealed for a long time in the popular accounts and in what was taught to schoolchildren who believed the whitewashed versions they were told.

I am glad that New Zealand is now a more mature and inclusive country which now embraces the whole picture of our history, and sees the colonialist accounts as inherently biased toward European dominance.

Pioneer cultures generally tried to prioritise accounts that favoured and honoured European accounts as the only accounts of "history". South Africa was unusual in that two groups of Europeans fought with each other to each prioritise their dominance in the country both wanted for its riches, which resulted in a bloody war between them. It is a sad fact that the English invented concentration camps in the Boer War, though one little mentioned by the English, not surprisingly, even today. History is very revisionist, even now, though not as much as a century ago or even 50 years ago. The narratives of former times need constant reconsideration in less colonialist times such as ours. Greater knowledge, better education and sound research challenging the old narratives have made a huge difference in NZ, though there is still a way to go yet.