Thanksgiving myth

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No Thanks to Thanksgiving

 

By Robert Jensen, AlterNet

 

“One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective collective fasting.

 

In fact, indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas.”

 

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See on unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com

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Genocide and THE THANKSGIVING MYTH

 

By S. Brian Willson

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“Let us recognize that accounts of the first Thanksgiving are mythological, and that the holiday is actually a grotesque celebration of our arrogant ethnocentrism built on genocide.”

 

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After serving in the Vietnam War, S. Brian Willson became a radical, nonviolent peace activist and pacifist.

 

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

This post has a number of drawings I hadn’t seen before and it covers the history of brutal U.S. oppression from the U.S. East coast, to West coast, then all the way to the Philippines.

 

I never knew about the “kill every one over ten” by General Jacob H. Smith in 1901.

 

@getgln

See on www.popularresistance.org

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Happy National Genocide (Thanksgiving) Day!

 

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“People always tell me to forget the past. I should just let it go and move on. Why do people of color always have to forget?! Would you tell a Jewish person to forget about the holocaust and just move on?! Would you tell the family of those who lost their lives on 9/11 to just forget about it?! So why are our tragedies forgettable and others are not?! I WILL NEVER forget! I will ALWAYS honor those who lost their lives unjustifiable.”

 

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See on www.huffingtonpost.com

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Mumia Abu-Jamal “Some Who Feel No Reason For Thanksgiving”

“Some Who Feel No Reason For Thanksgiving” To this day, I can hardly bear to think of that quintessentially American holiday—Thanksgiving. When I do, however, I do not dwell on Pilgrims with wide b…

See on unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com

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Thanksgiving Conundrum

 

“Justin Petrone, like me, is a mixed race person with Native American ancestry, although unlike me, initially, he never thought of himself in those terms.  I’ve always known and since I was a child, self-identified myself in that way.  Like me, Justin has spent years searching for his elusive ancestors, more often than not, hidden in the mists of time with only suggestions of who their ancestors are by words on tax lists and census records like “free person of color.”

 

Most of the time, Native people were transparent, until they became at least “civilized” enough to be counted on the census, or taxed or they did something else to bring them into the white man’s realm.  More recently, Justin and others like us have been able to confirm, or deny, that heritage via DNA testing.  So even if we don’t know exactly who our ancestor is, we are positive THAT our Native heritage is real.  In some cases, through DNA testing we can learn which of our ancestral lines is Native.”

 

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See on nativeheritageproject.com

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Cooking the History Books: The Thanksgiving Massacre

 

By Laura Elliff, Vice President, Native American Student Association,
Republished from Republic of Lakotah

 

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“Was Thanksgiving really a massacre of 700 “Indians”? The present Thanksgiving may be a mixture of the 1621 three-day feast and the “Thanksgiving” proclaimed after the 1637 Pequot massacre. So next time you see the annual “Pilgrim and Indian display” in a shopping window or history about other massacres of Native Americans, think of the hurt and disrespect Native Americans feel. Thanksgiving is observed as a day of sorrow rather than a celebration. This year at Thanksgiving dinner, ponder why you are giving thanks.

 

William Bradford, in his famous History of the Plymouth Plantation, celebrated the Pequot massacre:

 

“Those that scraped the fire were slaine with the sword; some hewed to peeces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatchte, and very few escapted. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyer, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweete sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enimie.”

 

The Pequot massacre came after the colonists, angry at the murder of an English trader suspected by the Pequots of kidnapping children, sought revenge. rather than fighting the dangerous Pequot warriors, John Mason and John Underhill led a group of colonists and Native allies to the Indian fort in Mystic, and killed the old men, women, and children who were there. Those who escaped were later hunted down. The Pequot tribe numbered 8,000 when the Pilgrims arrived, but disease had brought their numbers down to 1,500 by 1637. The Pequot “War” killed all but a handful of remaining members of the tribe.

 

An illustration from John Underhill’s News from America, depicting how the village was surrounded.

Proud of their accomplishments, Underhill wrote a book depicted the burning of the village, and even made an illustration showing how they surrounded the village to kill all within it.

 

Laura Elliff is Vice President of Native American Student Association.

 

Originally published November 22nd, 2009″
See on unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com