WAS PRECEDED BY LITERAL MILLIONS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES WHO HAD BEEN LIVING THERE FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS.
That's a very pedantic way to look at it. When teachers talk about the discovery of the Americas, there's an obvious implied "by the Europeans, for the purpose of permanent settlement" attached to it. Answering the question "who first visited Japan?" with "The Japanese" is completely useless, as an analogue.
Now, if you were to talk about how the Scandinavians settled bits of Canada at least 500 years before Columbus was born, that'd be much more interesting.