To Start off, the fact that we are still honoring a man who was a murderer, but is falsely taught in grade school as a hero who so-called "discovered" America by making the day of his arrival into a federal holiday is just ridiculous to me. It's 2017 going on 2018, and I'm sure a majority of Americans know the truth about Christopher Columbus. With this being so, the fact that Columbus still has his own holiday is beyond me! I'm now starting to wonder if celebrating Thanksgiving is like celebrating Columbus Day?
Don't get me wrong, I love Thanksgiving and celebrating it.
However, after reading an article from Independent.co.uk about how Native Americans feel about Thanksgiving and the American traditions makes me wonder if we should stop celebrating Thanksgiving the way we have been. A video embedded in the article is of Native Americans explaining what this holiday means to them. Most of the opinions are negative. Words such as lies, slaughter, and massacre were used by many of the volunteers as a way to describe the holiday. Columbus is linked to Thanksgiving so anything that he is connected to must be negative, right?
I was taught in school that Thanksgiving is a day for giving thanks. The pilgrims and Wampanoag Native Americans shared in a feast together in celebration of the pilgrims having a successful harvest. The feast was a way for the Pilgrims to thank the Native Americans for their help. What I later learned was that a feast between the pilgrims and this Native American tribe did occur, but it wasn't as friendly as I was taught for it to have been.
According to News.nationalgeographic.com, a year before the "first" Thanksgiving, the pilgrims robbed corn from Native American graves and storehouses in a desperate attempt to survive. The so-called peace that led to the first Thanksgiving was also just driven by trade and tribal rivalries. Let's also not forget about the thousands of Native Americans being killed by a disease that was brought over by the pilgrims.
Richard Schiffman stated in one of his articles from the HuffingtonPost that, "A Thanksgiving which ignores the systematic destruction of Indian cultures which followed hot on the heels of the Plymouth feast not only does a disservice to indigenous peoples, it falsifies our understanding of ourselves and our history."
For some, Thanksgiving is the national day for giving thanks, but we have to remember that for others it's the "national day of mourning." While many of us will be with our family and friends eating our very own feasts on this day, we must also remember the actual history behind Thanksgiving, and what it really represents.
