Thanksgiving’s Whitewashed History

I celebrated Thanksgiving the old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in the neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took all their land.

The above statement by Jon Stewart seems peculiar to say the least. For most of us, Thanksgiving is a day of gratitude and feasting. Naturally, whenever we think of Thanksgiving, pictures of turkey and cranberry sauce start making the rounds in our mind, and we practically start salivating. Thanksgiving is a quintessentially American tradition. For most Americans, and also students of AISG, Thanksgiving happens to be a holiday. It’s a full day away from school or work, spent eating and spreading appreciation! What’s not to like?

Apparently, a whole lot. As the story goes, English settlers also called pilgrims were new to Plymouth, which is in the U.S, and members of the Wampanoag tribe who were native to America, helped them grow food and furnished them with the necessary supplies. Upon the first harvest of Autumn, the pilgrims threw a feast with the Native American’s in attendance. It all seems very wholesome, and pure. But, was it really?

Thanksgiving was first declared by Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts in order to commemorate the people who fought in the Pequot War in Connecticut against an alliance of Native American tribes. More than 700 hundred natives of all ages including civilians and children were enslaved and killed. As popular news website The Day asserts, “[Thanksgiving] is the bloody Pequot massacre of 1637 that everyone is commemorating, not the 1621 turkey picnic feast in Plymouth.”

Many Indigenous Americans believe that Thanksgiving should be called the National Day of Mourning. They feel that Thanksgiving glorifies what they had to face with the arrival of the English, as well as the plight they had to incur. As a result of the European settlement in America in the 1600’s, many Native American’s died because the English brought with them many alien diseases which the Natives weren’t acclimatized to. Some of the diseases that the English carried with them were the plague, chicken pox, smallpox, whooping cough, scarlet fever, as well as the bubonic and pneumonic plague. These diseases were entirely unfamiliar and new to the American subcontinent, and none of the Native American’s had any sort of resistance built up against these diseases. It wiped out more than half of the indigenous population of America. A large number of people refer to this as a full-blown eradication of an entire community of people. Just for context, the Holocaust is also referred to as an eradication or decimation which puts in place how serious these allegations are. Not only are these allegations serious, but they’re also extremely thought-provoking. Relations further deteriorated between the two parties when the English colonists let their farm animals forage onto the lands of the Natives.

The Independent states, “Like Colombus Day, many people have a problem with Thanksgiving because they feel that it celebrates the conquest of the Native Americans by the English settlers.”

Many young children have been taught about Thanksgiving in school — however, they fail to learn the whole story, or rather are not taught the full picture. Many inaccurate references about the holiday and Native Americans are spread to young and impressionable minds each year. A shocking number of people that I’ve met still think of Native Americans as feather-headed hippies, which undermines and demeans the culturally rich community that they actually are.

Sophomore Lindsay B. says, “[Thanksgiving] isn’t widely celebrated in my family because we don’t have any emotional connection to the holiday.” When asked if she knows about the controversy surrounding Thanksgiving she states, “Yes, I definitely know about the controversy. Before the Thanksgiving feasts in my old school, the teachers always told us about the impact on [the Natives]. As far as celebrating [Thanksgiving], it has a different meaning to different people. I believe that people should spread more awareness, which they’re doing now for sure.” She ends with the message that “Part of the celebration is to find peace within [Thanksgiving], even if the history behind it isn’t the greatest.”

An organization known as Understand Prejudice recommends that schools do more on their part to spread accurate information about this particular holiday. They feel that schools should attempt to spread knowledge about Thanksgiving in a manner which is both responsible and not degrading to Native Americans. They believe that students should be taught why particular families choose to not celebrate Thanksgiving and how this holiday has a deep-rooted and problematic history. Understand Prejudice claims that that the younger someone learns about such issues, the more accepting one grows up to become.

Thanksgiving for most people is a celebration of coming together to appreciate one another and spread love. At the same time, it’s important to realize that what we’ve been told as children might not have been the full picture.

Hopefully, the quote at the beginning of this article, though still disturbing, seems a little less peculiar now.

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