Compiled our documentationDecolonization requires both the literal and figurative takedown of dudes who brutally murder other humans.. How many stupid and self-righteous tourists are with this guy?
"For about 20 years, thousands of locals and tourists have passed by this statue every day. It has been photographed countless times. Though it is on private land owned by the Garibaldi Maritime Museum, it's seen by all who traverse the Oregon Coast’s main artery.
Gray is widely hailed as the “discoverer” of the Columbia River, though for 12,000 years previous to his arrival, it was one of the most populated regions in North America, home to tens of thousands of members of the Chinook, Clatsop, Multnomah, Clackamas and Cascade nations. Gray is also credited with being the first to circumnavigate the globe in 1790. Many Pacific Northwest geographical features, high schools, scholarships, harbors and roads are named after him.
But, as with many American monuments, there is an untold story.
Gray has been linked to the infamous South Carolina triangle slave trade, having worked for slave traders Crowell Hatch and Samuel Brown. Following the abolition of that horrific trade, Gray outfitted a sailing ship bound for the Pacific Northwest, seeking sea otter furs. By many eyewitness accounts, his dealings with many Pacific Northwest tribes from Vancouver Island to Tillamook Bay was brutal and rife with murder, theft and the torching of villages.
In one well-documented instance, Gray kidnapped the son of the chief of the village of Opitsaht in British Columbia and ordered the entire village of 200 ornately carved ancestral homes burnt to the ground. "
