Thanksgiving is a celebration of colonization. Let’s acknowledge the movement of decolonization and reeducation happening right now in our country.
Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack of Settler Privilege
Peggy McIntosh first popularized the concept of white privilege in
her now-classic 1989 essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.”
The impact of her essay was due at least in part to its clarity and
readability; it broke down into a list of easy to understand ideas why white
people have unearned advantages in society based on their skin color. Not that
it was necessarily easy for white people to accept that they are in fact “more
equal” than others, but the essay opened up a conversation that has gained
serious traction in our social discourse, especially now when racism is on
full, unobstructed display in this Trumpian moment.
People who do not have ancestral connections to Native communities
are all either settlers or immigrants. People with ambiguous “Native ancestry,”
like Elizabeth Warren, are so disconnected from whatever Native roots they may
have had that they can no longer be considered Native. Settlers are people
whose ancestors who came to acquire recently dispossessed Indian lands, such as
recipients of the homesteads of the nineteenth century and earlier land
speculators. Immigrants are people who came later to cash in on the benefits of
American citizenship that didn’t necessarily include land (but might have if
they came with enough money to invest in American land). Most are settlers
(also “colonizers”) or immigrants by choice, with the exception of Blacks who
are descended from slaves who were settled here without their consent.
Settler Fragility: Why Settler Privilege
Is So Hard to Talk About
Settler fragility stems from settler privilege, which is similar
to white privilege in that it is systemic, structural, and based on white
supremacy, making it difficult to identify. Only in some ways, settler
privilege is far more covert and cunning. The reason is because of the
ubiquitous ways the US is normalized; that is, the US settler state is the
“water we swim in.” US citizens of all races and ethnic groups have been
indoctrinated their entire lives with messages designed to foster a sense of
national pride and belonging in the making of what has been called an “imagined
community,” which always occurs on Indigenous lands. Their citizenship and
their very identity are taken for granted without critical consciousness about
the US’s contradictory foundational structures and narratives.
Decolonizing Thanksgiving: A Toolkit for
Combatting Racism in Schools (this got 500 shares on my fb page)
Sample Letters to Send to your Child’s School
Resources for Educators and Families to Teach about Thanksgiving
& Native Peoples in a Socially Responsible Way
Children’s
Books about Native Peoples, Cultures, and Traditions
A Native Perspective on Thanksgiving
I
have been following the struggle of the Native American community since the
seventies. Several times, I even traveled Plymouth, Massachusetts with
activists from the International Action Center (IAC) to familiarize myself with
the native perspective on Thanksgiving, in particular. We visited the Wampanoag
tribe (the People of the Dawn), a community that is indigenous to the Plymouth
area.
During
this trip, I met Moonanum James, a co-leader of the United American Indians of
New England (UAINE). He explained that for Native Americans, Thanksgiving is
not a joyous holiday. Among other things, the UAINE is known for founding the
National Day of Mourning, which falls each year on Thanksgiving Day, as a way of
protesting the holiday. The origins of the Day of Mourning date back to 1970,
when Wamasutta Frank James, a member of the Wampanoag tribe, was invited by
Plymouth town officials to give a speech on Thanksgiving Day, but when
officials read a copy of it before the ceremony, they told him it was
prohibited. That’s because he had planned to speak at length about the violence
that occurred against native peoples.
Today,
the UAINE march around the town of Plymouth to protest the continued
misrepresentation and commercialization of their history. In 1997 they won a
court case against the town of Plymouth, which had arrested and pepper-sprayed
demonstrators, including children and elders. As part of the settlement, there
are plaques acknowledging Native history, including one plaque which is placed
on display where King Phillips’ head was on display for two decades, as well as
an educational fund to teach children in schools about native history.
Jaqueline
Keeler, of Dineh and Yankton Dakota heritage says Thanksgiving is really “a
U.S. celebration of early arrivals in a European invasion” that culminated in
the death of up to 30 million native people.
A
Thanksgiving letter
Dear
America,
Here
we are at this time of year where you pretend to love us Indians. You celebrate
a fictional story of Indians welcoming your bedraggled ancestors who came to
our shores uninvited, at least rightly claiming that we saved them from sure
starvation. Squanto was your hero, a man who turned against his own people for
his own benefit and whom the colonists desperately held onto anyway. Still, you
tell romantic stories of how Squanto saved your people and give that as
evidence for the Indigenous peoples fictitious warm welcome of people who cared
nothing of the fact that this was a populated land. For centuries they told
more tall tales about how this was a virgin wilderness, a land free for the
taking, divinely inspired by what appeared to us as a vengeful, mean god, a god
we did not recognize as the benevolent creator we knew.
Your
ancestors have used these stories of their own perceived superiority to justify
their plunder of our lands, the raping of our women, the killing of our babies,
the wholesale slaughter of our people, and now the trauma of those of us who
have survived the carnage. They wove it into a legal system that still
undermines our ownership, yes ownership, of our lands based on the fictitious
doctrine of discovery, in which (white) Europeans imagine themselves supreme
based on their colonizing religion. Yet most of you dont even know that this is
the foundation of your country, and if you do know it, you continue to justify
it in a million different ways so that you can feel righteous about living on a
land so violently appropriated in the name of your god whom you worship at the
altar you call democracy.
Well,
your ancestors were squeamish enough about killing us all off so that a small
fraction of us could physically survive. They needed us as a foil against their
own tyrannical, despotic relatives across the sea, as people to look toward for
what true freedom and liberty actually looked like, even while they
simultaneously reviled us for that freedom.
Even
though you look at us now and say you love us, you respect us, and what a shame
it was your ancestors did what they did to us, you were never completely
comfortable with our survival. The few of us who survived the American
holocaust fought like hell in countless ways and now our numbers are growing.
We have attained a measure of power in your institutions of capitalism and
so-called democracy. We are reclaiming our languages and cultures against the
never-ending onslaught of your vampire culture. We are not going away.
We
are the mirror to your own broken souls, exposing the ways your humanity has
failed and has failed so extremely that all life on the planet is now on a
death spiral, thanks to your supposedly superior culture. Our very existence is
a reminder of your hubris, your own unrelenting grandiosity. We may all go down
together in this sinking ship, but it is we who have been here since time
immemorial. It is we who understand the spirit of the land and who know how to
live in a relationship of respect for it. It is our ancestors whose spirits
peer through the veil of time and space, undoubtedly in sadness for what you
have done to our homelands. We will continue to survive despite you.
There
is no thanksgiving here for you. There is only thanks taking. We are not here
to make you feel better about your death culture. For this we do not apologize.
It is YOU who must get over it, and make things right, not us.
Just
my two cents worth as a surviving member of Indian country.
Thanksgiving Promotes Whitewashed History, So I
Organized Truthsgiving Instead
An
essential part of decolonizing Thanksgiving is to start educating our children
with the authentic history of this country. A book that re-examines basic
“truths” about Thanksgiving in an educational context is Rethinking Columbus:
The Next 500 Years. Considering that much of the Thanksgiving mythology is
based on sharing food, it is ideal to discuss the importance of Indigenous
first foods or food sovereignty with our children as well. The book Four
Seasons of Corn: A Winnebago Tradition discusses the traditional process of
growing and harvesting corn, de-commercializing what we eat, and promoting
culturally appropriate foods and agricultural systems of North America.
Decolonizing Thanksgiving: A Toolkit for Combatting Racism in Schools is a
quick read where more resources are listed; it even has sample letters that can
be sent to your children’s school concerning problematic Thanksgiving
activities.
Decolonizing Thanksgiving And Reviving Indigenous
Relationships to Food
Consider
the Nations who tended fruit and nut trees. Imagine the gardens of corn,
beans, squash, and sunflowers that were the ecological knowledge of the
Wampanoag- the very knowledge that saved the pilgrims from starvation. Consider
the songs, the kinship, the lineal seed keepers, and ceremonies that guided
Indigenous cosmologies, landscapes and people. Those sacred commitments left no
person hungry or without medicine or without worth. And now,
understand the deliberate effort of colonizers to disconnect Indigenous people
from our relationship to our traditional and ceremonial foodways- relationships
that made us whole. Understand the traumas of forced relocation, of slash
and burn campaigns from Haudenasaunee territory to Canyon de Chelly, our
hunting grounds deforested, waterways damned, and our individual and communal
indigeneity gradually outlawed. Consider the settler adage that “every buffalo
dead is an Indian gone.” Now fast forward to the American Indian
Religious Freedom Act of 1978, 486 years after the first attacks on our being,
and consider that it has only been forty years since we have “legally” been
allowed to restore our commitments to these lands. Forty years.
At Plimoth Plantation, Shedding Light On The First
Thanksgiving
Every
year, Plimoth Plantation holds a series of pre-Thanksgiving Harvest Feasts,
with 17th-century recipes and dining customs. There are spoons, but no forks -
some dishes are eaten with 3 fingers on the right hand. Men sling their napkins
over their shoulders. All the dishes are all based on 17-century English
recipes with things that were available in New England at the time. In addition
to mussels and turkey, there’s a native corn pudding, stewed pompion (or
pumpkin), and a pottage of cabbage, leeks and onions.
The
Harvest Feast is an approximate re-creation – with some 20th century
concessions – of how the Pilgrims’ may have celebrated the first Thanksgiving
in 1621. The familiar holiday we know today wouldn’t get that name for another
242 years. But the idea of pausing each year for a day of thanks and reflection
has endured ever since.
11 Thanksgiving 2018 Charity Ideas & Ways To
Give Back This Holiday Season
Giving
back can be as simple as making a monetary donation to an organization that's
working to make a difference. If you're in a position to do so, give some funds
to an nonprofit organization or other agency that's getting serious work done
on an issue you care about. Do some research on your own and use a third-party
site like CharityNavigator.org to help you find a super legit place to give.
Why These Native Americans Observe A National Day Of
Mourning Each Thanksgiving (video)
The Thanksgiving Tale We Tell Is a Harmful Lie. As a
Native American, I’ve Found a Better Way to Celebrate the Holiday
The
first official mention of a “Thanksgiving” celebration occurs in 1637, after
the colonists brutally massacre an entire Pequot village, then subsequently
celebrate their barbaric victory. Years later, President Washington first tried
to start a holiday of Thanksgiving in 1789, but this has nothing to do with
“Indians and settlers, instead it’s intended to be a public day of
“thanksgiving and prayer.” (That the phrase “Merciliess Savage Indians” is
written into the Declaration of Independence says everything we need to know
about how the founders of America viewed the Indigenous Peoples of this land.)
It wasn’t until the writer Sarah Josepha Hale persuaded President Lincoln that
the Thanksgiving holiday was needed and could help heal the divided nation that
it was made official in 1863. But even that was not the story we are all taught
today. The inspiration for that was far more exclusionist.
Native Women Tell the Real History of Thanksgiving (video)
“It
was a brutal, brutal genocide that took place, and each Native person that’s
here is a survivor of that genocide”
100 Ways to Support—Not Appropriate From—Native People
THIS
IS SO RELEVANT. For those of you "get over it" folks, just remember,
we have no other place where our story should told but on these continents;
other people (dominant culture) controls our narrative and we have limited ways
to present counter narratives (the TRUTH); and more people know us through
stereotypes than by accurate cultural and historical information, among other
things. "Let’s start with 100 ways you and yours can be allies toward to
the Indigenous peoples of this continent—our ancestral land."
Unlearning the Doctrine of Discovery
The
doctrine of discovery was a Christian invention which justified dispossessing
indigenous peoples of their land, parceling it out among emerging
nation-states, and turning it into private property for settlers. In this
framework, indigenous peoples are left with either extermination or
assimilation.Besides merely saying “sorry,” what would it mean to concretely
repent for the doctrine of discovery? What would it look like to act against
it? The truth is that undoing the doctrine of discovery would destabilize our
entire western legal tradition. Our society is organized around private
property and various claims to national territory which have discovery as a
foundation. Take away discovery and society as it is currently built falls
apart.
Grief at Thanksgiving: Gratitude with a grain of salt
I’ll
go ahead an acknowledge the giant turkey in the room, Thanksgiving can be the
pits for people who are grieving. Many of the values, traditions, and messages
associated with the day, like warmth, comfort, gratitude, and family
togetherness, can feel in direct conflict with a grieving person’s actual
reality. If you are grieving, you probably know what I mean by this. Although
you may be hesitant to admit it in the face of all the festivities, the
’30-Days of Thankfulness’ challenges on Facebook, and Charlie Brown and his
dang pumpkin. But you’re amongst grief-friends here, and it’s okay to admit
that you’re feeling just a little (or a lot) less grateful than you’ve felt in
years past.
400
years later, natives who helped Pilgrims gain a voice
Plymouth,
Massachusetts, whose European settlers have come to symbolize American liberty
and grit, marks its quadricentennial in 2020 with a trans-Atlantic
commemoration that will put Native Americans’ unvarnished side of the story on
full display. Organizers are understandably cautious this time around. When the
350th anniversary of the Pilgrim landing was observed in 1970, state officials
disinvited a leader of the Wampanoag Nation — the Native American tribe that
helped the haggard newcomers survive their first bitter winter — after learning
his speech would bemoan the disease, racism and oppression that followed the
Pilgrims. But the emphasis is on highlighting the often-ignored history of the
Wampanoag and poking holes in the false narrative that Pilgrims and Indians
coexisted in peace and harmony.
When Native Americans Were Slaughtered in the Name of
"Civilization"
Listed,
some of the most aggressive acts of genocide taken against indigenous
Americans.
Don’t Trash Thanksgiving. Decolonize It
But
we don’t have to reject the holiday completely. We can, and should, decolonize
and reinterpret it. The fact is, there is no one event from which the holiday
is derived. And around the world, other countries such as Canada, Liberia,
Netherlands, the Philippines, and Germany celebrate their own Thanksgiving on
different days. Some historians have documented that the tradition came
to the New World with the settlers. Some say the holiday was secular. Others
say it was religious. It has been observed on various dates throughout history.
In the late 1700s, George Washington declared November 26 a day of public
thanksgiving and prayer. Seventy-four years later, Lincoln proclaimed a
national Thanksgiving on the last Thursday in November to celebrate the Union’s
military successes in Civil War. And in 1941, FDR signed a resolution changing
the date from the last Thursday to the fourth Thursday of the month.
Since then, many have chosen to replace the traditional celebration with ones
that honor their sociopolitical or familial beliefs.
In some households, Pilgrims and “Indians” are never mentioned. Traditional
American history is never mentioned. The day is about spending time with
family, and of course the culinary delights prepared by the matriarchs of our
families. My family would stand in a circle holding hands. We’d each
share what we’re thankful for. My paternal grandmother would then pray and
bless the food. For some it’s about giving thanks by giving back to those
who don’t have families to spend time with, or a meal to eat. They go to
church, visit hospitals, nursing homes, shelters, food pantries, or folks on
the streets in their communities. Some sponsor dinners for families who are
experiencing financial challenges.
“On
[this] holiday we sit down with a simple bowl of rice (which two-thirds of the
world population would have been happy to have) and we made lists of all the
things and people we’re thankful to have and to know.” Ultimately, within
our families and communities and schools, we should stop, reinterpret, and
repurpose traditions that are harmful, either in theory or practice. I
learned from my elders that when you know better, you should do better.
As we enter into this holiday, let’s acknowledge the movement of decolonization
and re-education happening in our country. We can observe and celebrate
with our families in ways that honor those who the day originally dishonored,
and those who continue to struggle under oppression.
As
A Native American, Here’s What I Want My Fellow Americans To Know About
Thanksgiving
If
I didn’t find my community, my Native family or my traditional support, I’d get
swallowed up by colonialism. I realized the holiday was lifted on some
imaginary pedestal as a joyous day of peace between two worlds, when historians
know the truth to be much more violent. So what
could I do, or bring to my family, that would reclaim the day in a way that was
both healing and power-giving? The first time I attended the
Alcatraz Sunrise Ceremony in San Francisco was in 2017. The Sunrise Ceremony is
a special event organized by the Muwekma Ohlone people of San Francisco and
other Bay Area Natives, to come together as a community in the darkness of
Thanksgiving morning and partake in the reclamation of the holiday for our
surviving people. There is always a large, warm bonfire in the center and a
circle of relatives and guests that surround it.
10 Native Activism Organizations to Show Your Support This Thanksgiving
When Native Americans Were Slaughtered in the Name of ‘Civilization’
The
Gnaddenhutten Massacre
Battle
of Tippecanoe
The
Creek War
Forced
Removal
Mankato
Executions
Sand
Creek Massacre
Custer’s
Campaigns
Wounded
Knee
Resilience
The Thanksgiving Tale We Tell Is a Harmful Lie. As a Native American, I’ve
Found a Better Way to Celebrate the Holiday
Every
November, I get asked an unfortunate, loaded question: “You’re a Native
American—what do you eat on Thanksgiving?” My answer spans my lifetime. But our
families lived something different. My great grandfather helped fight off
General Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn, alongside other Lakota and
Cheyenne, not even 100 years before my birth. I think about my great
grandfather’s lifetime, being born in the 1850s—toward the end of the genocides
that began in the 1600s across America, and stretching into the subtler but
still damaging years of assimilation efforts we have endured since. He saw
escalating conflicts between Lakota life as he knew it and the ever-emerging
immigrants from the east. He witnessed the disappearance of the bison, the loss
of the sacred Black Hills, the many broken promises made by the U.S., along
with atrocities like the Sand Creek and Wounded Knee Massacres. He saw his
children attend the boarding schools where they had their hair forcibly cut and
were punished for speaking their languages. I wonder what he thought about the
Thanksgiving story.
How to Support Indigenous People on Thanksgiving
https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/zmdmb8/how-to-celebrate-thanksgiving-on-stolen-land?utm_campaign=sharebutton&fbclid=IwAR0_9pGvvLJDwMiL0TVmYuSrbxhB9ZBEI55Yxwn9BziRkybjEo33aV3MmWI
Here are some ideas for what to do on Thanksgiving instead of showing your gratitude for colonizers.
While there’s no harm in taking the time to be grateful for your
loved ones, here’s what you can do instead of extending that thanks to
pilgrims, the Founding Fathers, or any other colonizers.
- Find out which tribe(s) are indigenous to your area, and what they’ve endured so that you could live there. Online maps like Native Land and this one
on Native Languages can help. Once you know whose land you live on,
read up on the history of that tribe as written by them to get the full
picture of where you live, and extend your thanks and appreciation,
either in words or money, to said tribe.
- As you remember the
Wampanoag people, who allegedly sat down to feast with pilgrims in the
early 1600s, understand that not all Indigenous people are the same.
Many prefer to refer to themselves not as “Native American” or
“Indigenous,” but specifically by their tribe’s name. Each tribe has its
own set of traditions, practices, and beliefs. To learn more about the
nuances and designations that Indigenous people use to refer to
themselves, read this.
- Thanksgiving
preparation can take a lot of time. Instead of interpreting this as
making the most time-consuming, extravagant recipes you can find, spend
more effort reading about the history of the country as a whole as told
by indigenous people. Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations, and the U.S. Constitution
by Oren Lyons is a good place to start. If your histories of North
America have all come from white men, you’re not getting the full
picture.
- Your knowledge and support are nice, but put your money
where your mouth is, if you have the means. Instead of spending money
on a new outfit to impress your family or an expensive bakery dessert,
allocate some of that money to local organizations like the Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits (BAAITS) or national ones like The American Indian College Fund, anything helps. You can find a list of organizations catering to Indigenous people here.
- Consume,
and more importantly purchase, art, books, and goods by Indigenous
people. Ask yourself which Thanksgiving dinner ingredients you can get
from indigenous sources, then use this list
of Native-owned businesses to find them. Instead of doing the Black
Friday thing, gift a book or piece of art by an indigenous author to a
loved one to show them your appreciation. I recommend Every Day Is a Good Day: Reflections by Contemporary Indigenous Women by Wilma Mankiller and Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko. You can find a list of great books by indigenous people here and recommendations from the First Nations Development Institute here. You can buy Indigenous art online at websites like Shumakolowa.
- From putting the first man on the moon to fighting for our environment,
we have infinite reasons to be thankful for indigenous women. Show your
gratitude towards them this Thanksgiving by donating to organizations
that stand up for them, like the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center and the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women. (According
to the Indian Law Resource Center, “More than four in five American
Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence, and more than
one in two have experienced sexual violence.”)
Such efforts to reclaim food sovereignty as a way to recover health, in all its dimensions, among the nation’s survivors of a traumatic campaign of Native American genocide is gaining momentum, and particularly so among the TCU network, known colloquially as “Native American Land Grant Colleges and Universities,” or even more eccentrically, the “1994s.” Ironies are plentiful in explanation. As Europeans colonized North America from the east coast westward, they established infrastructure and institutions to facilitate their settlement project.
