(U-WIRE)   — Anyone who’s studied history, especially at a mostly liberal institution like Brown, knows that Christopher Columbus did not “discover” the Americas. Not only are many of his accomplishments falsified or overstated — Columbus was not the first Westerner to explore the Americas, and he never set foot in the United States — but the claim that Columbus or other explorers “discovered” America ignores the civilizations built and sustained by Native Americans for hundreds of years.To celebrate Columbus Day is to celebrate a colonizer’s holiday. It is the celebration of European powers claiming land on this and other continents, and a celebration of violence toward and oppression of indigenous people and culture. White people, ranging from European colonizers to the government of the United States, have committed innumerable brutal offenses against Native Americans over the past 500 years. Honoring Columbus with a holiday glosses over a racist, blood-stained facet of our history and glamorizes the past as victorious manifest destiny.We would like to urge faculty members to attend next month’s faculty meeting — 100 members are necessary to achieve a quorum — and vote for the proposal to change the name of the day off in October from “Columbus Day” to “Fall Weekend.” However, we also want to urge Native Americans at Brown, the student group behind this campaign, not to stop with simply renaming Brown’s vacation days.Most Brown students understand the racist and violent history of colonization, and while changing our calendar is an important symbolic step, it does hardly any work toward altering the way most people understand American history. If Native Americans at Brown is really serious about changing the common understanding of the founding of this country, the group needs a wider scope.It should begin by lobbying the local school boards to change the curriculum, teaching about Native American culture and the way tribes were driven out of New England. It should hold panels and talks on campus to further educate students about the effects of colonization in this country and about the status of Native American tribes and land today. It should lobby the state legislature to change the name, and even the date, of Columbus Day. We should consider any celebration of Christopher Columbus an affront not just to Native Americans, but to the causes of diversity and cross-cultural understanding.—-Contact The Daily Reveille’s opinion staff at [email protected]