It was once called Columbus Day, and it still is in many parts. A day to celebrate the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, who supposedly “discovered” America. But America was there long before Columbus came. And so were millions of people up and down the continent. Experts estimate that there were anywhere from 60–90 million people in the Americas at the time. Possibly even more people in the Americas than in Europe at the time. 

But disease and successive wars by waves of invading Europeans decimated the local Indigenous populations. Over the next century, roughly 90% of Indigenous peoples in the Western Hemisphere had been wiped out.

But they have constantly resisted to this day.

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Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Stories of Resistance Indigenous resistance episodes:

• Episode 4: How Indigenous peoples in Brazil fought COVID-19
• Episode 8: Celebrating Indigenous roots in Chile’s Arica carnival
• Episode 23: Reforesting the Andes, one tree at a time
• Episode 48: Protecting Q’eswachaka, the last Incan rope bridge
• Episode 50: Inti Raymi returns as an act of resistance
• Episode 54: How Indigenous field hockey is reviving Mapuche culture
• Episode 56: Karipuna resistance: Defending the Amazon

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