No thanks to Thanksgiving
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As people gather at dinner tables for home-cooked meals, family reunions and to count their blessings during the Thanksgiving holiday, Native Americans will commemorate the day too, but with a different perspective and account of their history and plight in the United States.
“We’re certainly not against giving thanks. As indigenous people we give thanks every day … The issue here with the Thanksgiving holiday as celebrated in the United States is that it perpetuates this myth that the wonderful Pilgrims came here from Europe and were so kind and good to the Native people who were here and lived happily ever after,” said Mahtowin Munro, co-leader of the United American Indians of New England.
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President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving an official U.S. holiday in 1863 but Ms. Munro said the holiday in reality has bloody roots. It was an official day was proclaimed in colonial times to give thanks that a militia had returned safely from massacring more than 700 Pequots, she said. Many of victims were elders, women and children, Ms. Munro said.
That is part of why every year, her organization holds a National Day of Mourning in Plymouth, Mass., to honor Native ancestors and current struggles of Native people. This year marks the 42nd gathering.
Native Americans have the highest rate of suicide in the U.S. at 16.25 per 100,000 for 2002-2006 per the Centers for Disease Control, she noted. Millions upon millions of Native Americans have died in European-perpetrated genocide, just as Africans did. And the root of America’s wealth really is in the theft of indigenous land, the genocide of Native people, and the enslavement of Black men and women, Ms. Munro continued.
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The National Day of Mourning aims to set the record straight, not just about the past, but about today’s circumstances.
“The biggest issue facing us is poverty and unemployment. In many states where there’s a larger Native population, our unemployment figures are much, much higher than for White people. In the Northern Plains, for instance, unemployment is around 50 percent and Alaska is very bad, too,” Ms. Munro said.
Other struggles include the continuing theft of traditional lands by the U.S. government and corporations, and less access to decent health care. And in addition, she’s concerned over the lack of educational opportunities for Native children.
According to Ms. Munro, people who have attended the Day of Mourning have returned to their homes and told the truth to their families at the Thanksgiving table.
“I think a lot of people want to know the truth about history and what’s going on in this country and Occupy Wall Street is indicative of that, people trying to break free of mental shackles and understand things and speak with each other,” Ms. Munro said.
Mark Anquoe, of the International Indian Treaty Council and American Indian Movement, agrees that there’s nothing wrong with giving thanks and feels that the day gives families an opportunity to openly dialogue about what really occurred.
