The Politics of Thanksgiving

Being home from school is truly heaven– I woke up at 11 this morning, ate a nice breakfast cooked by my dad, and got right back into bed afterwards. As I scrolled through all my social medias, I couldn’t help but notice how excited everyone was for Thanksgiving. From memes about going on “walks” with your cousins before dinner to Snapchat stories documenting the food prep, it seemed like everyone was gearing up for a great time.

And then I wondered if Native Americans felt the same way about the holiday; obviously, I knew that this was a group that was historically treated very badly by colonists and their descendants and that when we learned about Thanksgiving in elementary school things were sugarcoated at best, but I wanted to find out for sure if Thanksgiving was alongside Columbus Day on the list of holidays that effectively symbolize the oppression of a certain group.

After Googling up a storm, I found out that many Native Americans consider Thanksgiving to be a day of sadness and remembrance. In fact, the United American Indians of New England (UAINE) organized a National Day of Mourning to commemorate Native American’ lives lost in colonial times. Additionally and unsurprisingly, I found that Native Americans in Plymouth, Massachusetts rally against Thanksgiving on the fourth day of November every year.

This is all very sad to me. I think it is a shame that the very people who are indigenous to this land and whose skills and advice we used to prosper are unable to celebrate this day because of its implications. I know that there have been efforts to make a holiday that celebrates Natives but, clearly, those efforts have failed.

What is even more sad is how often Native American culture is mocked and trivialized around this time of year. When I was little, I remember making paper headbands with feathers on them and having to bring food in for our little “feasts” at school. This may seem harmless, but when you actually think about it, it was very backwards for the school system to make us do that.

First of all, as children we never learned about how awful colonists treated Native Americans. I understand that it is not appropriate to teach young children about such things as genocide but we were essentially taught to believe that the relationship between colonists and Native Americans was happy, friendly, and mutually beneficial. This could not be further from the truth. In essence, we were lied to.

Second of all, when you consider my previous point, it’s a little fucked up to have children (who believe Natives and colonists were BFFs) pretend to BE Native Americans to celebrate the holiday. Dressing up as a Native American in this way is insulting for a couple reasons but I think in this situation especially, it is just adding insult to injury because it implies Natives themselves approve of the holiday which, as aforementioned, they really don’t.

This being said, I don’t believe Thanksgiving is up there with Columbus Day; I think that we can go about celebrating it in a way that doesn’t undermine Native Americans by 1) being conscious of the history between Natives and colonists and 2) not disrespecting Native culture. I think kids should still make Native crafts and have fun classroom Thanksgiving parties– but they should also be aware that Natives and colonists weren’t exactly friends, save the gory details.

Happy Thanksgiving!