Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving Day in the US is an awkward time. Aside from the fun of having a day off, watching football, overeating, or just being with family and friends, we shouldn't forget that the holiday actually commemorates a big myth in American history. This holiday originated as a feast of giving thanks, celebrated by cooperation of the Native Americans (aka Indians) and the newly arrived immigrants, the pilgrims. Have you ever wondered how Native Americans feel about this holiday today?

We've all seen images of the meal, with both groups contributing and enjoying a feast. History books report that this happened (http://www.2020tech.com/thanks/temp.html). But, considering what we now know happened to the Native Americans in the years that followed (see Native American links below), it is extremely unusual that this image is still pushed onto school children and the public at large. Most of the Native Americans at that feast were dead a few years after their contact with the pilgrims, from diseases introduced to their native land. Most of the Native Americans that were spared death from these new diseases, died resisting the expansion of territories held by the colonists. The result has been that a population that numbered a few million 300 years ago, is now no more than 400,000 - most of them living in isolated reservations far from their original fertile hunting and farming lands.

Thanksgiving Day symbolizes the "Last Supper" of the Native Americans. Arab-Americans familiar with the modern history of the Palestinians find it difficult to play along with this game. Jewish Europeans fleeing the Holocaust and survivors of persecution in Europe arrived in Palestine for refuge. They then turned around, took the land with arms and forced out the local population in 1948, destroying as much of Palestinian culture and history as they could. Golda Meir's remark that, there is no such thing as a Palestinian, shows clearly the attempt of the colonialist to rewrite history. If the Arabs resist, label them terrorist. This sounds all too much like the term used to describe the Native Americans, "savages", for their attempts to protect their nation, land and way of life.

Thanksgiving Day has become commercialized like most other holidays in America today. But, let us not be ignorant of the true history associated with it. Let us give thanks for the good things in our lives, our family and friends. let us also take this reminder of history as an opportunity to learn about the history of Native Americans, as an integral part of the history of this nation. Let us not allow their rich history to be forgotten. There are many useful sites on the internet by Native Americans. Following are just a couple of interesting ones. Let us know what you think.

Native American Links:

http://hanksville.phast.umass.edu/misc/NAresources.html

Pocahontas' tribe, the Powhatan Renape Nation's history of their experience with the European immigrants: http://www.powhatan.org/
"Since the time we met the Europeans in the 1500's, our history has been characterized as a struggle to survive war, disease, prejudice, and cultural disintegration. Foreign disease alone probably accounted for halving the Powhatan population by the end of the 17th century. Many of the survivors of those early epidemics were largely decimated by war and starvation. Yet, against all odds, we the Renape (human beings) have survived."

excerpt from the Fourth World Documentation Project:

4. The Wampanoag Indians were not the "friendly savages"
some of us were told about when we were in the primary
grades. Nor were they invited out of the goodness of the
Pilgrims' hearts to share the fruits of the Pilgrims'
harvest in a demonstration of Christian charity and
interracial brotherhood. The Wampanoag were members of a
widespread confederacy of Algonkian-speaking peoples
known as the League of the Delaware. For six hundred
years they had been defending themselves from my other
ancestors, the Iroquois, and for the last hundred years
they had also had encounters with European fishermen and
explorers but especially with European slavers, who had
been raiding their coastal villages.(6) They knew
something of the power of the white people, and they did
not fully trust them. But their religion taught that
they were to give charity to the helpless and
hospitality to anyone who came to them with empty
hands.(7) Also, Squanto, the Indian hero of the
Thanksgiving story, had a very real love for a British
explorer named John Weymouth, who had become a second
father to him several years before the Pilgrims arrived
at Plymouth. Clearly, Squanto saw these Pilgrims as
Weymouth's people.(8) To the Pilgrims the Indians were
heathens and, therefore, the natural instruments of the
Devil. Squanto, as the only educated and baptized
Christian among the Wampanoag, was seen as merely an
instrument of God, set in the wilderness to provide for
the survival of His chosen people, the Pilgrims. The
Indians were comparatively powerful and, therefore,
dangerous; and they were to be courted until the next
ships arrived with more Pilgrim colonists and the
balance of power shifted. The Wampanoag were actually
invited to that Thanksgiving feast for the purpose of
negotiating a treaty that would secure the lands of the
Plymouth Plantation for the Pilgrims. It should also be
noted that the INDIANS, possibly out of a sense of
charity toward their hosts, ended up bringing the
majority of the food for the feast.(9)

see the rest of this document at http://www.2020tech.com/thanks/temp.html

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