October 6, 2023
"Discovery" and Leif Erikson
October 9, since 1935, has been a holiday. The holiday’s name is Leif Erikson Day. It is the day that commemorates the arrival of the first “European” on North American soil. The idea that Leif Erikson was the first European to “discover” America was promoted by Scandinavians in Canada and the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and in 1935 President F. D. Roosevelt signed it into law. Each year the sitting U.S. president declares the holiday once again.
Of course, this year, October 9 is also Columbus Day. Since 1792 in New York, Columbus Day has been celebrated on October 12. In 1934 Congress made it a national holiday, and in 1971 it became a federal holiday, and it moved to the second Monday in October. This year the second Monday is October 9.
Many, maybe most of you, have seen pictures of the administration building at the University of Notre Dame, famous for its Golden Dome. Few of you have probably seen the series of large tapestries in the hall of the first floor of that building depicting the first missionary to the Americas, Christopher Columbus. The “Knights of Columbus” is a lay Catholic movement which promotes evangelism and charity, celebrating those qualities of Christopher Columbus. But of course, this does not ring true to our native American friends.
In 2021, the Evangelical Covenant Church at its annual meeting renounced the “doctrine of discovery.” The doctrine of discovery is a theology, policy, and law that declares that European or “Christian” nations have the sovereign right to take land from non-Christian native people. In doing so, we rejected the long held view that ‘Columbus’ came to this land with the gospel and the best interest of the native people of the Americas in mind. In this case ‘Columbus’ represents all people who have taken lands and peoples captive, treating the natives as a lower form of humanity.
This year there are three holidays on October 9: Columbus Day, Leif Erikson Day, and Indigenous Peoples’ Day. As someone of European descent who grew up near the Seneca Reservation, I have some choices on that day. I choose to confess that when I was growing up I was complicit in the dehumanizing of my Seneca neighbors by laughing at jokes about them, and never questioning the stereotypes of them being “less than” me and those like me. I choose to celebrate—not because I am Scandinavian, but because he was humane—Leif Erikson Day, celebrating the one who came, and saw and didn’t conquer. And I choose to pray for my sisters and brothers in Christ who continue, by sins of omission and sins of commission, to do violence and harm to fellow human beings in the name of the God of love who created us all.
I hope you enjoy your holiday on October 9, however you choose to celebrate it.
~ Pastor Todd