By Sean Kirst
Buffalo News
Early Friday, the city of Buffalo took down a familiar statue of Christopher Columbus. If it had happened in the days before the pandemic, Rick Hill might have sat with Oren Lyons to talk for hours about the decision, to reflect on how such an event came to pass within their lifetimes.
Yet Lyons, an Onondaga Nation faithkeeper who taught for almost 40 years at the University at Buffalo, is now 90 and dealing with back problems related to his military service, long ago, as an Army paratrooper. He is staying on a farm near Syracuse, preparing to do a little painting and essentially quarantined until the danger from Covid-19 has passed.
Hill, a Tuscarora artist, historian and indigenous educator, lives at the Six Nations of the Grand River territory near Brantford, Ont. He misses his old friend, but for now the two men must be content with long phone conversations.
They both say they were moved by the decision about the statue, primarily because the request that made it happen came from within a regional Italian-American cultural federation, a move supported at a Friday news conference by Mayor Byron Brown and other civic officials.
“This is a huge one for Buffalo,” Hill said Friday, “and such a powerful step.”