"Celebrated his whole life, and its one of my favorite holidays because it is food - oriented.”
“Because even when we were slaves it brought us all together.”
“I am super thankful for my family and it brings us all together around the dinner table”
Food, family and tradition pretty much summed up the evaluation I took of personal reasons for celebrating Thanksgiving. Most people are completely unaware of why they celebrate thanksgiving and most people actual don’t care to inquire why.
It is noted from several sources that Pilgrims invited a group of Natives to a feast in order to break bread over the massive successful harvest and give thanks to God for the harvest. This common thought paints a pretty picture with singing, dancing, and peace. But the Europeans did not bring peace to the natives.
So what is the reason for the celebratory practice of Thanksgiving?
The answer is clear, to illustrate the image of peace and how the natives and europeans coexisted in a land they “discovered”. Therefore as children (in elementary school), we were taught a fallacious reality of how the Natives and Europeans coexisted, which left us content with the information we know.
History
Prior to the European era, their were an estimated 12 million Natives that walked this country that was reduced by 95% (237,000) within four centuries. If that doesn’t scream genocide, then maybe you should google the term. Similar to the holocaust of the jews and the massive exportation/killing of African slaves, nothing is different than what occurred centuries ago to the Natives. It’s crazy that to this day Natives are still referred to as Indians. This just shows the level of respect given to the people that inhabited his country before it was "this country". The respect they desire would be writing the truth about them in textbooks instead of sugar coding the actions of the Europeans, who invaded their land, brought diseases like small pox, and looked at their land as profitable. The Europeans “newfound land” was extremely profitable; however, not with the existence of natives. They implemented several removal acts like the “Trail of Tears (destruction of the cherokees)” or smaller military actions like starvation or the spread of disease. The fate of the Natives is truly unbecoming.
Disrespectful Outcomes (Dearth of Historical Information)
The lack of respect for Natives results in privileged individuals marching around on a pagan holiday like Halloween as an “Indian Chief”. They never have the intention of empowering the people, only the idea of wearing their cultural clothing because of “how cool they appear”. I have never seen anyone dress up like a jew for halloween and I am sure that if someone did he/she would be crucified for mocking them. The value of a person all depends on the region they originate from. Natives along with Africans are constantly mocked and imitated by privileged individuals, who are completely unaware of their beautiful history.
Resolution
Individually I don’t want to eradicate a tradition of eating together and giving thanks for what families possess, I want to add to that the memorialization of the native lives lost in the unrecognized genocide of natives that began in the late 1800s. Many americans are unaware of the native blood that flows through their veins. Memorialize their deaths because they were a gentle people who walked this country with kind hearts and mild intentions.
