In the process of educating myself about the history of racism, colonialism and oppression in the United States, I’m realizing how much of the history I learned either comes from white people’s perspective or is an outright fabrication. No better example than the story of Thanksgiving.
Today, then, I am “passing the mic” to those telling the true story of the American holiday. I’m offering a few excerpts from two pieces that were helpful and enlightening for me. I encourage you to read both of them for the whole story and explore further on your own.
In Thanksgiving pageants held at schools across the United States, children don headdresses colored with craft-store feathers and share tables with classmates wearing black construction paper hats. It’s a tradition that pulls on a history passed down through the generations of what happened in Plymouth: local Native Americans welcomed the courageous, pioneering pilgrims to a celebratory feast. But, as David Silverman writes in his new book This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving, much of that story is a myth riddled with historical inaccuracies. Beyond that, Silverman argues that the telling and retelling of these falsehoods is deeply harmful to the Wampanoag Indians whose lives and society were forever damaged after the English arrived in Plymouth.
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From the interview with Dr. Silverman:
What is the Thanksgiving myth?
The myth is that friendly Indians, unidentified by tribe, welcome the Pilgrims to America, teach them how to live in this new place, sit down to dinner with them and then disappear. They hand off America to white people so they can create a great nation dedicated to liberty, opportunity and Christianity for the rest of the world to profit. That’s the story—it’s about Native people conceding to colonialism. It’s bloodless and in many ways an extension of the ideology of Manifest Destiny.
What are the most poignant inaccuracies in this story?
One is that history doesn’t begin for Native people until Europeans arrive. People had been in the Americas for least 12,000 years and according to some Native traditions, since the beginning of time. And having history start with the English is a way of dismissing all that. The second is that the arrival of the Mayflower is some kind of first-contact episode. It’s not. Wampanoags had a century of contact with Europeans–it was bloody and it involved slave raiding by Europeans. At least two and maybe more Wampanoags, when the Pilgrims arrived, spoke English, had already been to Europe and back and knew the very organizers of the Pilgrims’ venture.
Most poignantly, using a shared dinner as a symbol for colonialism really has it backward. No question about it, Wampanoag leader Ousamequin reached out to the English at Plymouth and wanted an alliance with them. But it’s not because he was innately friendly. It’s because his people have been decimated by an epidemic disease, and Ousamequin sees the English as an opportunity to fend off his tribal rebels. That’s not the stuff of Thanksgiving pageants. The Thanksgiving myth doesn’t address the deterioration of this relationship culminating in one of the most horrific colonial Indian wars on record, King Philip’s War, and also doesn’t address Wampanoag survival and adaptation over the centuries, which is why they’re still here, despite the odds.
From Truthsgiving: The True History of Thanksgiving | DoSomething.org
“It’s past time to honor the Indigenous resistance, tell our story as it really happened, and undo romanticized notions of the holiday that have long suppressed our perspective.” ~ Christine Nobiss, Indigenous activist and Decolonizer with Seed Sovereignty
In addition to historical background, this article offers some simple, impactful things you can do to help combat Native erasure this holiday:
Celebrate Indigenous cuisine. Add one of these recipes from Indigenous chefs to your Thanksgiving spread, with a focus on local, sustainable ingredients.
Speak about Native peoples in a respectful way. Look over this Do and Don’t guide for allies and use it to start conversations with your friends.
Learn and teach the true history of Native people. You can help shape your education. Present these lesson plans to your teacher (Native People Today, Impact of Native Americans, and The Future is Indigenous Coloring Book) and ask them to engage in discussions about Native Americans, their history, and their impact.
Acknowledge whose land you’re on at this very moment. Enter your zip code to find out whose traditional territories you’re residing on. Take a minute to learn more about them and honor their enduring relationship to the land.
Support Native-lead initiatives. Watch and share this mini-documentary about the Fort Belknap Indian Community’s fight against the Keystone Pipeline.
Watch the Klepper docuseries episode, Invisible Nation. Hear more about the impact of invisibility on Native peoples, and use this viewers guide from IllumiNative to further your understanding.
When the history we thought we knew is revealed to be a fiction, it can be jarring to our sense of country and our sense of self. Difficult as it is, it is essential that we learn and understand the true history in order to heal and move forward.
IMPORTANT PS: I would love to hear how these accounts land with you and if you have any resources for learning our true American history. Please leave a comment below!