I'll Just Call it Turkey Day!

Moving to the UK I thought perhaps I would leave this holiday back in America, my husband convinced me to share the holiday with my family here in London.  Thanksgiving is strange holiday.  We prepare a huge feast and eat until we are stuffed all in the memory of those first settlers who came to America on the Mayflower and nearly died had it not been for the indigenous people who saved the colonists.  The story goes that in 1621 the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag Indians shared a feast to celebrate the autumn harvest thus marking the first Thanksgiving. The harvest would not have been possible if the Wampanoag has not taught the colonists what plants were edible, how to grow crops, fish in the rivers, extract sap from trees, etc.  For decades following this, individual colonies and states celebrated days of thanksgiving.   In 1863 in the midst of civil war President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national holiday known as Thanksgiving to be held each November.   Today we acknowledge the 4th Thursday of each November as Thanksgiving.   

This is the story we are taught from the tender age of five, we bring home pilgrim hats made of construction paper, colour turkeys made from our hand prints, and as a grand finale of the holiday school children put on a production portraying that first Thanksgiving.  What a bunch of hooey!!!  This narrative we are taught and reminded of year after year paints a perfect and happy portrait of relations between the Wampanoag and the colonists.  It completely glosses over the long and bloody conflict between the Native Americans and European settlers.  A conflict that has resulted in the death of millions!  For Native Americans the 4th Thursday of November severs as a day to remember the disease, racism, and oppression the European settlers brought.  It is a day to remember and mourn the loss of millions of lives during the centuries of conflict between the Native people and the settlers.  We were sold a myth about the first Thanksgiving from a very young age.   In reality the colonists rewarded the kindness of the Native American peoples kindness by enslaving many and trying to carry out genocide on the rest.

My mum and I, I  think have always struggled with this holiday.  Being part European and part Native American its a struggle to come to terms with the holiday.  One part wants to celebrate the other part wants to mourn.  The only way I have found to cope with this holiday is to acknowledge both sides.  I am grateful for the kindness my Native ancestors showed to my white ancestors and I mourn for my Native American ancestors who were enslaved, ravaged by disease and war, and died.  I do not celebrate what my white ancestors did to my native ancestors but I do acknowledge it.  What I do celebrate is a year of successful harvests.  I give thanks that I have a roof over my head, food in my belly, and good health.  I give thanks to my ancestors for their strength, their courage, and their sacrifice.  I give thanks for my family and for all that I have.