Mrs. Ciafalo’s fifth-grade class sits silently at attention as we are instructed. The Dutch East India Company created something mysterious called mercantilism; Pizarro (Peru-Incas), Cortes (Mexico-Aztecs), Hudson (New York-Mohicans) were brave “leaders of expeditions.” There is no mention of “conquest”; the natives “were colonized,” a passively soothing phrase. We celebrate Thanksgiving that year with textbook images of “The First Thanksgiving” swirling in our heads.

On a Saturday afternoon I walk by St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NYC with my two best high school friends, Rachelle and Laura. The city is filled with crisp autumn air and pigeons and orange leaves. Rachelle the artist says, “It’s soooo beautiful!” Laura the activist says, “The people who built it worked at least 60 hours a week under harsh conditions and were underpaid.” I stand between them, thinking, “You’re both right.”

The UT Austin campus is buzzing as a young history professor is giving his famous lecture on Native Americans. I crowd into the hall with scores of other un-registered students just to listen to history as it is rarely taught. Now there is mention of “conquest” and “smallpox” and “genocide” with larger-than-life projections of horrifying historical evidence.

I’ve always been more of a Rachelle. Lately, Laura-like thoughts niggle at my soul. Take for example my recent vacation to the Dominican Republic: four-star resort, all-inclusive, lovely people, lovely beaches.

The DR was obviously a Spanish conquest. I couldn’t help wondering what had happened to the natives. It wasn’t hard to surmise how the African-Dominican population had gotten there.

I checked. When Columbus arrived on Hispaniola Dec. 5, 1492, at least 400,000 well-organized, pottery-making, sea-faring, agricultural Tainos lived there. Columbus wrote: “They give all they possess for anything given to them. … They are very well built. … They do not carry arms. … They should be good servants.”

The inevitable occurred:

• Conquest and death by war
• Smallpox/measles and death by infectious disease
• Discovery of gold and the rape of resources for the crown
• Enslavement and death by brutality
• Importation of African slaves.

And that old diehard, the rape of indigenous women.

Fifty-six years later the Taino population was fewer than 500.

After piracy, human trafficking, revolution, tyrannical dictators, Haitian invasions, civil wars, military coups, assassinations and a U.S. occupation, the DR enjoys relative stability, albeit with “a significant increase in crime, government corruption and a weak justice system.”

Your typical New World tale.

I landed 615 years and 152 days after Columbus and all I could think was, “Here I lie content in paradise, and there you stand praying you’ll sell a trinket. Is there any native blood mixed with the slave’s?”

I hear the words of Yanis Varoufakis: “For centuries Europeans populated the earth. We sent our ships to the Americas. … We destroyed the indigenous people in the world. … We created the New World, that’s what we did, and we thought it was our right.”

That story still unfolds.