Author: To read Sonali Kolhatkar's article, please click here.

For generations, Indigenous communities in the United States have protested Columbus Day—a centuries-old observance in the United States—and for decades have led a movement to rename the second Monday in October from “Columbus Day” to “Indigenous Peoples Day.” Today, more than a dozen states have formally embraced Indigenous Peoples Day as part of a process to recenter Indigenous communities and end the glorification of settler colonialism.

Precisely within this context, educator and author Oriel Siu takes on the historical myth of Columbus in her new children’s book Christopher the Ogre Cologre, It’s Over. Using clever rhymes, but never avoiding the barbarity of colonization, Siu, whose pen name is Dr. Siu, reimagines Columbus as a monstrous ogre who ravages the Americas.

The new book is the second in a series of Siu’s books whose protagonist is Rebeldita the Fearless, an “empowered, justice-seeker, border-smasher girl,” and “a child born out of long-enduring Indigenous and Black resistances in the Americas.”

Kolhatkar: Was this book an effort toward rethinking “Columbus Day” as Indigenous Peoples Day and to recenter Indigenous people in the history of colonization?

Siu: It goes much further than just the day. It’s aimed at shifting the paradigm, toward rethinking our school curricula, and decentering Whiteness and White Supremacy. It’s not just for children of color or children of the United States, but for all children of the Americas. The fairytale of this person named Christopher Columbus who “sailed the ocean blue,” and came to “discover” new lands is a lie that is taught not just in the U.S. but throughout the Americas and it continues to be taught in many European schools in Spain and England.