Here is one example:
King Joao II of Portugal was a statesman that supported the exploration and exploitation of the undiscovered world. Arguably the first nation to discover America, under Joao’s reign Portugal made several other important discoveries while also advancing the field of nautical navigation.
The problem with this narrative is that it implicitly divorces the indigenous inhabitants from the rest of humanity’s history, as if nothing that they ever did ‘counted’ as history. If it had said, ‘the first European nation to find America,’ then that would have been acceptable, but suggesting that any Europeans ‘discovered’ America arrogantly dismisses the indigenous presence as somehow irrelevant or unimportant.
When we talk about Turtle Island’s history (like so), we never say, ‘The Native Americans discovered Europeans.’ Hell, I never see anybody say that the Romans ‘discovered’ Germania — or anywhere else, for that matter, and I think that that is because Germanic history is as much a part of human history as Turtle Islander history is (or should be, at least).
I know that I am really late to this party and that this narrative has been becoming less popular in recent years, but I have never seen anyone quite articulate the issue with it like this either, so I needed to rant.
There’s a material reason that the narrative takes this form on top of the colonialist/supremacist reasons.
When Europeans first made contact, they brought disease that destroyed native civilization. I’ve read that more than 90% of the population was wiped out by smallpox and other diseases. By the time Europeans came back to settle, the continent felt empty and unclaimed.
To add even more to the bullshit narrative, indigenous cultivation was no longer possible. Vast swaths of land went from carefully managed prairie and farm field to feral forest. However, the forest was young enough to be cleared easily. The settler’s ease at clearing the “wild” forest was evidence of their superiority over the backwards and lazy natives, who couldn’t put such blessed land to good and Godly use.
The native cultivation was/is highly advanced and developed for specific climates- it’s really fascinating. I find it depressing that the way many people are taught erases that in favor of eminent domain style narratives.