Rethinking Thanksgiving: losing the myth, gaining the truth

I have celebrated Thanksgiving with family for seven decades, separating it from what in other parts of my brain I knew to be a sham. The story that we tell about the Pilgrims and Native Americans covers up the greed and racism that drove European immigrants to colonize land that belonged to Indigenous peoples and commit genocide, murdering 12 million Indigenous people between 1492 and the present (Smith, 2017).

Do I want to stop celebrating? No, but I do want to rethink the day and honor the truth. “…we do this work not ‘for’ Indigenous Peoples, but in partnership in partnership with Indigenous People” (Indigenous Solidarity Network, 2022). I have searched the Toolkit on Rethinking Thanksgiving and found that I am living on Kumeyaay/Kimiais land. I am adding a few new recipes and cooking with love and gratitude. And when we hold hands at the beginning of the meal and give thanks, I’m going to start my thanks with truthtelling.

I love this quotation from the Rethinking Thanksgiving Toolkit: “We cannot expect that justice will ever come if we are not willing to face the injustices of our past and present. Holidays can be a time to connect and talk about these realities and touch people’s hearts in profound ways. This can be fertile ground for lasting change.”

History books (most) tell students that the first Thanksgiving was in 1621 when Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag shared a meal. when the Wampanoag rode to the settlement because the gunfire they heard made them worry a war had started. When they saw that a celebration of harvest was going on, they joined the colonists. However ten years later, “the pilgrims started a decades-long war with their Indigenous neighbors. Ultimately, the colonists massacred the local tribes, including the Wampanoag” (Martin, 2021).

Indigenous people have lived in North America for some 13,000 years. Europeans were late to the continent, although they made their mark, colonizing and committing genocide. In David Treuer’s book review of Indigenous Continent by Pekka Hämäläinen, he takes readers on a historical journey in which Indigenous people ruled the continent with their economics, governments, military, social structure, and cultures. In fact, Hämäläinen makes an argument that rather than a US history of European immigrants, we need “a North American history recentered on Native people and their own ‘overwhelming and persisting’ power” (Treuer, 2022).

Toss out the mythology and what you find is that the official holiday itself has nothing to do with Pilgrims or Native Americans. In 1771, the Continental Congress declared a day of Thanksgiving for victory at the battle of Saratoga, a battle between the English and the Europeans immigrants who had colonized despite the Native American populations living on the land. Then Washington in 1789 declare a Thanksgiving holiday day of thanksgiving for adoption of the U.S. Constitution. The list of the various iterations goes on and on.

Resources

Indigenous Solidarity Network. (2022). Rethinking “Thanksgiving” Toolkit. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Me3v2fdjIPBQVkzALHhge2K8q4bCBe7cCBvVAZ11UQc/edit?mc_cid=2e3e9c5701&mc_eid=UNIQID#heading=h.6ydekc4feku6

National Constitution Center. (2016) https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/10-surprising-thanksgiving-facts

National Congress of American Indians: https://www.ncai.org/about-tribes:

Emily Martin. (2021) How the traditional Thanksgiving feast has evolved over centuries. National Geographic https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/how-the-traditional-thanksgiving-feast-has-evolved-over-centuries

David Michael Smith. (2017). Counting the dead: Estimating the loss of life in the Indigenous Holocaust, 1492-Present. https://www.se.edu/native-american/wp-content/uploads/sites/49/2019/09/A-NAS-2017-Proceedings-Smith.pdf

David Treuer. (2022). Do We Have the History of Native Americans Backward? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/11/14/do-we-have-the-history-of-native-americans-backward-indigenous-continent