Thanksgiving has become a celebratory staple in American culture, symbolizing the official pivot into the holiday season. It’s celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November, but what exactly is being celebrated?
American elementary schools have taught us that Thanksgiving is a feast to celebrate the arrival of the colonizers. Well not those words exactly, but some common keywords include “Pilgrims,” “Mayflower” and “Plymouth Rock.”
As we get older, we slowly learn that this is a distorted version of history. By the time we’re in high school, we are fully aware of the fact that this holiday is commemorating the mass genocide of Native American people.
To be specific, the story of the first Thanksgiving was the “first meal” in Plymouth, Mass. However, the first official Thanksgiving that was federally recognized was to celebrate the creation of the Constitution of the United States, according to a Nov. 14 article by Almanac.
Highly romanticized and historically inaccurate, the common narrative is that the poor European immigrants (also known as the Pilgrims) arrived on a ship named the Mayflower.
By the time the Pilgrims settled, they were starving, so Native American people shared their harvest with them.
What is often omitted from the narrative is that the Pilgrims repaid their gratitude by kidnapping and enslaving the Native Americans and spreading a plague throughout the region, according to a Nov. 22, 2021 article by Green Matters, a publication highlighting the climate crisis.
Everything about this “holiday” is a sham, even the symbolism. There’s no evidence of turkey or sweet potato pie being served originally, according to Blackfeet Tribe member Gyasi Ross in a Nov. 21, 2021 video essay for MSNBC.
It didn’t stop there either. Eventually, the majority of their land was stolen.
Tisquantum, more commonly known as “Squanto,” was a well known member of the Patuxet tribe who helped the Pilgrims as a guide and interpreter. Squanto helped the Pilgrims, who were weakened by malnutrition and illness, and by teaching them how to cultivate corn, catch fish, avoid poisonous plants and extract sap from maple trees, according to a Nov. 15 History.com article.
In return for his kindness? Thomas Hunt, an English “explorer” kidnapped him and sold him into slavery in Spain, according to a profile by Biography.com. By the time he escaped and returned home, he discovered his tribe was killed by smallpox, which the colonizers were responsible for bringing.
We’ve all known at least some of this to some extent, so why the hell are we still celebrating this event? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about some turkey and a couple of days off, but at what cost?
The concept is now also to “give thanks and show gratitude” which is ironic, considering the colonizers did the same thing by harming Native American people in literally every way possible.
Native Americans have received the short end of the stick time and time again, from having their rights and land stripped from them to the blatant ignorance and stereotyping surrounding their backgrounds and customs.
It’s time to question the normalization of a capitalist concept that celebrates mass genocide and all sorts of atrocious crimes.
