WASHINGTON — Growing up on the Sandia Pueblo Reservation, New Mexico state Rep. Derrick J. Lente learned the same Christopher Columbus stories in school that his parents and grandparents had learned.
“I was taught he discovered my ancestors, essentially, no matter how far removed we are from the ocean,” said Lente, 40. Sandia people have cultivated land near Albuquerque since 1300 A.D. and trace their lineage to the Aztec civilization.
“Christopher Columbus didn’t find us,” he said. “We have our own creation stories, our own language, our own history.”
Lente later learned the Italian explorer, who set out to find a trade route to Asia, landed in the Bahamas in October 1492 and never set foot on what would become the United States. He concluded that Columbus “led genocide, rape, pillage and death, and he tried to extinguish a large Native American population.”