Thanksgiving not popular for all Americans, especially the original inhabitants
As millions of Americans sit down to celebrate Thanksgiving today, some Native Americans are pushing back, urging the country to remember the implications of white settlement on indigenous cultures.
As they have for decades, hundreds of people participated in a “National Day of Mourning” in Plymouth, Mass. on Thursday afternoon near where the first Thanksgiving is thought to have taken place. Not everyone wants to hear that message while gorging on turkey and filling Facebook with thanks for friends, families and good lives.
“Sometimes we’re told to go back where we came from, which is pretty ironic,” said Mahtowin Munro, co-leader of United American Indians of New England, which organizes the annual protest march.
Some of the frustration centers around what some Native Americans see as their relegation to supporting players at that first celebration, rather than people with long-existing culture, knowledge and government. History puts the first thanksgiving in 1621 at Plymouth, between Pilgrims and members of the Wampanoag tribe.
"They are depicted as nameless, faceless, generic “Indians” who merely shared a meal with the intrepid Pilgrims. The real story is much deeper, richer, and more nuanced,” says the National Museum of the American Indian, which this year released a guide for teachers covering Thanksgiving. "For the English, interaction with the Wampanoags enabled their colony’s survival. Although the English were interlopers, the Wampanoags shared their land, food, and knowledge of the environment.”
Thanksgiving not popular for all Americans, especially the original inhabitants
This article is especially important considering that we’ve all migrated here from elsewhere, and so we must be grateful for the hospitality of those who were here before us because you cannot be thankful to your One and Only Creator unless you show gratitude to your fellow mankind for their kindness.