It’s November yet again, for us the excitement of Thanksgiving starts the very first day of the month. The planning on who’s house everyone will gather to, who’s going to bring what or cook what. For many places, there’s also the Football game featuring their home team to watch as well. The cooking of the feast is rightfully and traditionally timed right around this event. The tradition in many American households to gather up their “fixins,” and gather around the TV to watch the game, has become almost the standard of “what to do” on Thanksgiving Day.
At this point you may be asking yourself, “What does this have to do with politics?” Actually a great deal, also this article will deal with a great amount of what were taught and are told when we’re growing up. To really elaborate on it all, I’ll give you the following in the viewpoint of an average American person, the Native American, and of course the historical facts.
First, to many Native Americans, this isn’t a Holiday to celebrate, in fact, a big majority do not. Personally my family and I do, although like many people, it’s really a glorified reason to get together and eat some tasty food. I don’t discount the values of a family getting together to share a day. Especially in this day and age, where you don’t find many opportunities to really sit down and have a meal with your family.
The mindset of most Native Americans is that the Holiday is really just a normal day, with normal values one should extend everyday. However that isn’t the focus of this article, to really understand it all, keep reading..
The tale popular in school and folklore is that the Indians sat down with the Pilgrims for a friendly Harvest Feast. Having a large community feast after the fall harvest was a common thing in Europe. Flash forward to 1970, the 350th anniversary of the pilgrims landing in Massachusetts. Abraham Lincoln had proclaimed Thanksgiving a holiday, and it was a fairy tail of a feast that was allowed to exist until that day. When Frank B. James, President of the Federated Eastern Indian League was asked to speak for a Plymouth banquet. Exposing the Pilgrims for having committed, among other crimes, the robbery of graves of the Wampanoag's. He wrote:
“We welcomed you, the white man, with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end; that before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a free people.”
Officials told him he couldn’t deliver such a speech, and offered to write him another. He declined, and on Thanksgiving day hundreds of Native Americans from around the country came to protest.
So what really happened in Plymouth in 1621?
