Decolonizing the Holidays: Thanksgiving

Repost from Freedom Road's Facebook and Instagram

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Nov 24, 2022

Today, people across the country gather with friends and/or family to sit down, overeat and give thanks. But of all the holidays that we need to decolonize, Thanksgiving is the hardest to redeem.

It was born from a supposed shared meal between colonists and the Wampanoag people in 1621, but according to an article by Moonanum James and Mahtowin Munro published by the United American Indians of New England (UAINE) the first official “thanksgiving” was proclaimed in 1637 by Governor Winthrop after the return of men who had participated in a massacre “of over 700 Pequot women, children, and men.”

Thanksgiving has been used to sanitize and white-wash an horrific history of genocide—an erasure that continues to this day in the form of broken treaties and promises. For example, Congress still has not seated Kimberly Teehee, who was selected in 2019 as the non-voting representative from the Cherokee nation. The Cherokee nation has been promised a delegate since the treaty of New Echota in 1835. Today, three years after the current delegate’s selection and nearly 200 since the treaty promise was made; the Cherokee nation is still waiting.

The atrocities perpetrated by our colonizing nation through forced boarding schools, the handing out of smallpox-soaked blankets, the massacres of the Pequot, the Cheyenne and Arapaho at Sand Creek, and the Lakota at Wounded Knee are hidden from many of our historical texts. In the same way, mid-20th century flooding of North Dakota’s Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara nation land and prolific toxic dumping on Native reservations evades newspaper headlines today.

A progressive politico was recently quoted in the New York Times likening the midterm election results to “escaping the massacre at the Battle of Little Bighorn.” That battle was not a massacre. It was a Lakota and Cheyenne victory against those seeking to massacre them. It was Indigenous resistance; framed as a tragedy. Why? Because the stories we tell have been written by white men determined to preserve the myths of inherent white male goodness, white male rightness, and white male rule.

So, as you sit down today, don’t tell your children the story of the pilgrims and the Indians, rather teach them about groups of diverse and resilient people who have survived despite the odds. Look up whose land you live on and learn something together about the Indigenous people who were displaced, where they are now, and what they are fighting for. Then, find ways to pay micro-restitution by donating to ongoing tribal efforts to bring health to their people, save their languages and protect their culture.

Source:

https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/thanksgiving-day-mourning-many-indigenous-communities?gclid=Cj0KCQiAg_KbBhDLARIsANx7wAz6TFANUsiCC74uVbJnJoDX2BQ1moJnKpMj4JHUTprv94rWaXAweG0aAjqKEALw_wcB

http://www.uaine.org/historical.htm#ndom

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-ecology-of-the-first-thanksgiving/#:~:text=While%20not%20the%20inspiration%20for,known%20as%20the%20Mystic%20Massacre.

https://www.cherokee.org/our-government/delegate-to-congress/

Quote re: midterms: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/13/us/politics/biden-2024-election.html

Find out whose land you’re on:

https://native-land.ca/

Lisa Sharon Harper is author of critically acclaimed book, Fortune: How Race Broke My Family And The World—And How To Repair It All.