Written by Lauren James Budhu
Turkey, pumpkin pie, stuffing, casseroles, maybe some football – these are some of the things that typically come to mind around the topic of Thanksgiving. Every year, families travel by planes, trains and automobiles to spend the last Thursday of November with their loved ones, noshing on a bountiful harvest of foods to kick off the holiday season. While many have fond memories of celebrating Thanksgiving, the national holiday unfortunately has a bloody past that not many people truly know about.
In school, Americans have been fed a narrative that Thanksgiving is centered around pilgrims and Indigenous Peoples living in harmony. In reality, we live on land that was stolen by means of genocide, including the forced removal of its original residents.
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer article, “Should We Rename Thanksgiving ‘National Ethnic Cleansing Day?", documents show that while a small group of pilgrims did celebrate a harvest festival with local natives at the start of their second year in the New World, it wasn’t exactly called “Thanksgiving,” nor was it a ritual.
Instead, the first official holiday more or less reflected the arduous relationship between the white settlers and Native Americans– something that most people probably didn’t learn about in school. This occurred 16 years after the Puritans’ first winter, when Massachusetts Bay Governor William Bradford designated “a day of thanksgiving kept in all the churches for victories against the Pequots.” Disturbingly, the only natives present were those taken captive during a bloody raid that preceded it.
The Pequot Massacre, as it’s known, happened on May 26, 1637. It was the final blow over four years of skirmishes between four colonies with their native allies and the Pequots, a tribe of more than 8,000 spanning most of Connecticut. Two colonial officers led a group of several hundred men to the Pequot settlement and burned it, setting fire to 80 huts that housed 800 people. Over 700 Pequot died in the massacre; survivors were hunted and slain, or sold into slavery.
For decades after this massacre, annual religious ceremonies and fast days were held in its memory. Thanksgiving was made an official holiday by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, less than a year after the nation’s largest ever mass execution – the hanging of 38 Sioux men in Minnesota. Since 1970, Native Americans have gathered every Thanksgiving at Plymouth Rock for a National Day of Mourning, in remembrance of the Pequot people and the tragedies that occurred in 1637, and the years following.
So where do we go from here? Writer Anna Mindess of Berkleyside highlights ways to acknowledge and commemorate Thanksgiving from local Indigenous People, in order to celebrate the holiday respectfully.
Here at Mojave Desert Skin Shield, we celebrate this day with a bow to the First Nations by communing together with dishes from our respective lineages. We give thanks to Mother Earth and to those who receive us immigrants here; together continuing to forgive and heal from an unjust past, with eyes towards a just future.
