The truth behind the Christopher Columbus’ history with Native Americans or “Indians” as he called them, is shocking to a lot of people. This reading gave me more insight at the horrors Native Americans were put through, all for the greed of one man. So much of that history has been inaccurately told to our students with the excuse of protecting them from the uncomfortable details. For many years, this man was portrayed as a hero, an explorer, and a valuable seaman from Europe who discovered new territory. One thing is finding a way to teach students about history at an age appropriate level, and it’s a whole other thing when this history is cleaned and patched up to make certain figures look better. The topic of Christopher Columbus is one of many stories where the voice of the oppressed is silenced and pushed aside; his actions led to a genocide and its downplayed to this day. It is our responsibility to teach our future students the real story through a different perspective and honoring the story of the people that suffered at the hands of Christopher Columbus and his crewmen. The picture depicts the first few words of a poem given to elementary students when they would learn about Christopher Columbus. Just from that first sentence you can see that this would portray his story as positive and it will glaze over the real one. Students aren’t getting anything from knowing he sailed the ocean blue in 1492, it’s a meaningless date that they need to know for a test, but what happened to learning about the rich culture and people he and his crewmen massacred?
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