Thanksgiving: A Celebration of Genocide and White Privilege
Ah, the holidays. A time for food, family and fun. This Thanksgiving, millions of Americans sat down to eat turkey and watch football, a tradition that has been going on for decades. But we rarely stop to ask ourselves: why do we have such a holiday, and what are we really celebrating?
As most are familiar with, it all starts back in 1620 when the Mayflower landed in Plymouth. After more than two months of terrible conditions on board the ship, the colonists established an outpost on a hill in what is present day Plymouth.
Inevitably, the Pilgrims would meet the native people in the region. Leading up to this meeting, however, the Pilgrims had pillaged burial mounds of natives and stolen crops. The first contact was nothing short of confrontational, with a group of Pilgrims exploring the area south of the outpost waking up to arrows screaming by them. The native tribe living in the area was the Nauset people, who had been terrified by European settlers for centuries. Long before the Pilgrims, white French and Scandinavian settlers had attacked, kidnapped and given them deadly illnesses.
The famous “feast” that many Americans think of when they reflect on this history of this holiday was not only an event of racial dominance, but was based upon the genocide of an entire tribe.
In the fall leading up to the famous feast, tensions between local tribes, such as the Wampanoags, and the Pilgrims had reached a tipping point. Aside from frequent skirmishes between the groups, the Pilgrims had established a massive wall around their settlement and created a search party designated to kill Chief Massasoit of the Wampanoag tribe.
There is little historical information about the first Thanksgiving, but what we do know is that shortly after the dinner, a group of colonists captured and beheaded a young native man and left his head on a stake in front of their settlement as a warning to the natives. This was a blatant sign of white power and dominance in the area: the very natives they had just forged an alliance with were murdered days after.
On top of that, a similar Thanksgiving feast held by the Pilgrims nearly a decade later wasn’t meant to give thanks to their cooperation with the natives: it was to give thanks to God that the surrounding tribes had been killed by smallpox.
The story doesn’t end there. Ever since the first encounter between the Pilgrims and Natives, our nation has perpetuated a system of settler colonialism, where natives are stripped of their land, culture and dignity through forced assimilation to a Western European, Christian ideal. Colonization takes place everywhere, from boarding schools in the 1800s that kidnapped native children from their homes, to President Trump approving the Dakota Access Pipeline that contaminates water sources and steals land from natives. Far from preventing discrimination, reforms have only brought issues underground. It is no coincidence that even after being “provided” with funds from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, reservations rank below national averages in education, access to housing and household income. Loopholes are never questioned or sealed, resulting in a disconnect between laws and results.
Fact or fiction, stories such as the first Thanksgiving are used to continue disparities unconsciously for Americans, starting from a young age.
That’s where the problem lies. We live in a world full of love and peace as well as hatred and bigotry. We’re told to stand up for what we believe in and that the truth will set us free, but when it comes to something as simple as telling the correct version of history, historians and history classes remain silent.
So, this Thanksgiving, take the time to reflect on what you are really celebrating. No matter what you’re thankful for, take the time to understand the atrocities committed towards native peoples. The worst thing we can do is continue to be ignorant.
by ASHLAN AHMED