Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 1991)
• ▼ D *c*m b «r I N I ▼ j«a>t ou t MT0TABOR Contemporary florist and Distinctive Designs gift ideas • cut flowers • plants •silks • balloon creations • parties • all occasions Columbus 1 invasion of the " New World " Five hundred years later a debate is raging, should the anniversary be a party or a wake? Serving all hospitals and funeral homes 256-2920 7819 S.E. Stark TUeftota 3279 SE Hawthorne Blvd. 238-0651 HOLIDAY SHOW Oil Paintings - ARLETHA RYAN Blown Glass - ROSS NEDER Ceramics - TERESA AMAN . Mirrors and Ornaments by Graystone Gallery Artists Gallery hours - Thanksgiving to Christmas Open every day from 10am to 6pm Buying or Selling? Let me give you a hand. Buyers, call me for a free 90 minute consultation before you begin your home search. I'll help demystify the home-buying process, how to prequalify for financing and advise you on investment potential and market trends. Sellers, call me today for a free market evaluation of your home with no obligation involved.*As a marketing specialist, I can show you how I can get you the most money for your property in the shortest time with the least hassle. // I start by Listening." (503) Res. FAX mobile 232-6000 234-6255 232-7032 720-4642 Millynn James SUN WILEY Million Dollar Club Member Your Real Estate Professional PSC HI AIN m s See classifieds for this months selected listings.. T "They would make fin e servanls...with fifty men we could subjugate them a ll and m ake them do whatever we want." In this entry in his October, 1492 ship log. Christopher Columbus describes the Arawaks o f the Bahama Islands, the first native people he encountered in "discovering the N ew W orld" Five hundred years after Columbus dropped anchor, a debate is raging over how to mark the anniversary, should it be a party or a wake? Already, there have been public-television specials and Smithsonian exhibits, replicas o f the Nina and the Pirita docked in model 15th-century Spanish ports. The next year prom ises even more hoopla hailing the Columbus legacy. And there are sharp voices o f dissent, people peeling layers offthat m yth to reveal the unsavory core o f the Columbus story. They suggest that his arrival in America marked not discovery but invasion, not friendship but greed and exploitation. Groups o f Native Americans, African-Am ericans, even the N ational Council o f the Churches o f Christ have said a celebration is the wrong way to remember slavery, genocide and the slow ruin o f the natural world. The struggle is larger than Columbus and his status as hero or destroyer. It involves entitlem ent and invisibility. The winners’ story makes the losers invisible; gay men and lesbians and all people o f color have known that fo r years. The Columbus debate is really about the right to write history; it comes at a time when people long silenced are working together to fin d a voice. by Susana Santos down gold effigies, destroyed ceremonial erotic reat Grandma said: "A long time icons and all other forms o f a rt Their ultimate ago, before the white man, Spilyay purpose was to eradicate the primal spiritual hu (Coyote) was sent ahead to carve on man existence and to force matrilineal or egalitar these here rocks the law that the ian societies to submit to a new social and religious Creator had given to our people. Standing Spotted Owl, why don't you order. and your During this 500-year historical course which kind ju st go out and save the Man Who Turned to eventually led to the founding o f the U.S. gov Stone rock spirits that the Chiapples are destroy ernment, the patriarchy continued to destroy ing? G randm a's really worried this time." "No. I can't interfere with Spilyay because i f ceremonial sites. The indigenous perspective be they break down the laws o f M other Earth and all lieved the great wonders o f nature, life and pure beauty were sacred. The theology of the indigenous that is known to be sacred, then it is the day o f the Man Who Turned to Stone and the salmon won’t view threatened the new frontiersmen, the federal run to feed the people." government and religious establishments because Since the beginning of ceremonial times, such concepts posed obstacles to civilizing the people throughout the Americas were indigenous “beast-like” Indians and converting them to to the Earth. They painted on caves a celebrated Christianity. time when the people lived with Mother Earth and After the annihilation o f most of the country’s learned from the night sky. They built temples to indigenous population and public outcry against the gods, created earthmounds, sundials and pyra the slaughter and pillage o f the people, the gov mids and left the wonders and works of nature to ernment entered an agreem ent with Native be. American tribes, including those in Central Or To further their understanding of nature, they egon. The Treaty of 1855 ceded to the federal performed elaborate rituals to conceive medicine, government 10 million acres o f East-Central Or war and, ultimately, peace and spiritual direction. egon in exchange for what is now the Warm This was a means for people to live within certain Springs reservation. The tribes reserved certain laws of creation. These laws equated the feminine treaty rights within ‘ceded Areas,’ for traditional principle with spiritual power. hunting, Fishing, medicinal food and plant gath In 1492, when Columbus and the Spanish ering and religious practices. The treaty nations conquistadors arrived in what later became known and fishing societies throughout the Greater Che as the Americas, they found to their disbelief Wan a basin and river tributaries still maintain entire native cultures engaged in pagan rituals. their struggle for self-determination. TheTygh of These sometimes involved public expression of Tlxni are descendants o f the treaty signators who sexuality as part of their spiritual freedoms. The still fish on the lower Deschutes River at Sherar’s colonists decreed these acts capital offenses. At Falls, “Falls of a W oman’s Hair.” (Sherar’s Falls that time, European immigrants were fleeing the is a colonist name.) devastation of half that continent’s population by In post-modern history, the National Forest Bubonic Plague. It was also a period that saw the Service and other federal agencies played a de persecution and death of several million women liberate role in the process o f destroying cultural for heresy, branded as witches for their practices and geographic sites. By design, both ceremonial of folk spirituality, midwifery and medicinal arts. landscapes and treaty lands have been plundered On behalf of the Spanish empire and the Judeo- in order to create state and national parks, tourist Chnstian impetus to gain dominion over the new attractions, dams, recreational roads and to ski- world, an inquisition followed. Its perpetrators lift us into the 20th century. committed unspeakable torture against women The genocide o f the Americas continues. and “homosexual” religious leaders. Their goal was to eradicate the foremost capita] offense— the abominable sin—and punish the people’s Susana Santos is a traditional fisherwoman, refusal to submit to a new religion. visual artist, poet, political activist, and To finance the discovery of the Americas and lesbian. She is a m em ber o f the Tygh River enrich the Spanish coffer, the conquistadors melted Band on the lower D eschutes River. G