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Danielle Smith felt a weight lift off her shoulders Friday after Mayor Ben Walsh announced that Syracuse will remove a statue of Christopher Columbus following years of protests and public discussion. 

Smith, a member of the Onondaga Nation, participated in a months-long conversation about the statue’s future as part of the Columbus Circle Action Committee. Walsh appointed the 25-member group in July to develop and present possible solutions to the decades-long conflict over the statue, which stands in the city’s Columbus Circle. 

After the mayor announced plans to move the statue and rename Columbus Circle, Indigenous organizers and committee members expressed relief that they had concluded an intense, emotional debate about the monument’s place in the city. 

“Having that type of iconography right in your face in a public space is, and was, so painful for so many different people,” Smith said. “Not only Indigenous people, but Black people and other people of color.” 

Syracuse’s Italian American community funded the statue’s construction in 1934. But for Indigenous people, the monument serves as a reminder of Columbus’ murder and enslavement of their ancestors, Smith said.

Columbus enslaved Indigenous peoples, including the Taíno people of the modern-day Caribbean, who died from murder, enslavement and disease following his arrival.

The mayor’s full plans for the circle include moving the statue to a private location, renaming Columbus Circle and constructing a “year-round education and learning site” that will recognize the Onondaga Nation and include information about the impacts of colonialism. The planned site will also educate visitors about the struggles and contributions of other racial groups in the Syracuse community.

The action committee — which included members from the Indigenous and Italian American communities in Syracuse — met for weekly sessions over the course of two months to discuss the statue’s place in the city. It issued a report to Mayor Walsh a few days prior to his announcement that outlined the group’s findings and presented five potential scenarios for the fate of the statue. 

One of the committee’s proposals was to completely remove the monument and replace it with a “Heritage and Education Site,” which is the plan Walsh laid out in his announcement.

Though the committee included removing the statue as one of its recommendations, the group experienced a significant amount of tension in coming to that decision, according to the group’s report. Committee members disagreed over the extent to which Columbus should be held responsible for the atrocities committed against Indigenous people.

During each weekly meeting, members of the committee spent “considerable time” reading documents and listening to presentations about Columbus’ actions and legacy. The committee failed to reach a unanimous consensus during its time together.

“In the time that we were given to accomplish this task we, as a group, were not able to untangle the competing opinions and interpretations of facts,” the committee’s report states. “Discerning interpretations and opinions from fact regarding Columbus was an unfinished piece of business.”

Smith said being part of these weekly discussions and sharing her personal grievances about the statue was a taxing experience. In June, Indigenous people in Syracuse and across New York state, including Smith, formed the Resilient Indigenous Action Collective, which held several rallies in the city over the summer to urge Mayor Walsh to remove the Columbus statue. 

Walsh initially included three members of the Onondaga Nation in the Columbus Circle Action Committee. While Smith and other members of the RIAC had to push Walsh to include more Indigenous members on the committee, only six of the 25 committee members ultimately were Indigenous people, she said. 

During the committee’s discussions, a small handful of members occasionally made racist remarks, which Smith said were difficult to deal with.

Lisa Sacco, another member of the committee, agreed that the group’s discussions were emotionally draining. Sacco, who is both Italian American and a member of the Mohawk Tribe, said some members of the group made insensitive comments that she didn’t expect when she agreed to be part of the committee.

After the committee’s weeks of debate, the mayor’s announcement that the statue would be removed felt bittersweet, she said.

“When I found out, I actually cried because I was so happy about it,” Sacco said. “But I also don’t feel great that we’ve made other people feel bad. I know it hurts … Italians who didn’t want to see it come down, but I think their pride shouldn’t be someone else’s pain.”

In the coming months, Walsh will appoint a commission to begin designing the educational site that will replace the Columbus monument. The committee included several recommendations in its report about possible features for the educational site, including specific components that focus on the history of the Onondaga Nation and Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

Ethan Tyo, a member of the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne and part of the RIAC, is excited to see the statue replaced by a space meant for the entire Syracuse community, he said. The removal of the statue will provide him, and many other Indigenous people, with a sense of “relief and closure,” he said.

“I think (the replacement process])is going to grow with this movement, not only locally, but nationally, of recognizing the people who built this country — who have sweat, blood and tears poured into this place, and the lives that have suffered because of it,” Tyo said.

Despite the emotional labor that the committee demanded, Smith said she is glad to see the culmination of decades of protests by the Onondaga Nation. With the statue gone, Smith’s family and other Indigenous people will feel a greater sense of acceptance in the Syracuse community, she said.

“As an Onondaga woman and a mother, having this statue down means so much, and especially for the future generations,” she said. “I’m just really happy that my daughter and her future kids won’t have to see that — that it’s not an accepted thing in our community anymore.”

Published on October 13, 2020 at 11:28 pm

Contact Gillian: gifollet@syr.edu