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AND STOP PROPAGATING/EXPLOITING THE MYTH OF THANKSGIVING TO MAKE
POINTS ABOUT IMMIGRATION TODAY!
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position: static; z-index: auto; background-position: 50%
100%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; ">The Myth of
Thanksgiving</h3>
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<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;
text-indent: 0px; ">By <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2014/11/the-myth-of-thanksgiving.html#author"
target="_self" title="Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is the author
of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States."
style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(121, 102,
55); ">Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz</a></p>
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font-size: 14px; line-height: 23px; ">
<div class="entry-body" style="clear: both; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size:
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left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space:
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background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: static;
z-index: auto; ">
<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; text-indent:
0px; ">Thanksgiving is the favorite holiday of many US
Americans; unlike the rather boring or divisive holidays
that honor <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2014/10/change-the-columbus-holiday.html"
target="_blank" title="An Open Letter to President Barack
Obama: Change the Columbus Holiday to Indigenous Peoples’
Day" style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(121,
102, 55); ">Columbus</a>, Presidents, Martin Luther King,
Jr., Independence, veterans and war, the birth of a
religion, and a new year, Thanksgiving is centered on
sharing food with family and friends. Individuals and
families travel long distances at great expense to be with
one another. It might be surprising to learn that the
cherished tradition of Thanksgiving is, in fact, the most
nationalist of all holidays because it narrates the national
origin myth. The traditional meal, as we know, consists of
the foods cultivated by Indigenous farmers—corn, squash,
pumpkin, sweet potatoes, and turkey.</p>
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<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, Tahoma,
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<div class="entry-more" style="clear: both; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size:
14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight:
normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 23px; text-align:
left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space:
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background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: static;
z-index: auto; ">
<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; text-indent:
0px; ">The US origin story of a covenant with God goes back
to the Mayflower Compact, the first governing document of
the Plymouth Colony. It is named for the ship that carried
the hundred or so passengers, half of them religious
dissidents, to what is now Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in
November 1620. This compact marked the beginning of settler
democracy, which from its inception sought the elimination
of the Indigenous. Behind the black clothed and solemn
“Pilgrims,” was a corporation of shareholders, the Virginia
Company, accompanied by armed and seasoned mercenaries on a
colonizing project ordered by the English King James. If any
local Natives were present at a colonizers’ celebratory
meal, they were surely there as servants, and the foods were
confiscated, not offered as a gift.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; text-indent:
0px; ">“Thanksgiving” became a named holiday during the
Civil War, but neither Pilgrims, nor Indians, nor food, nor
the Mayflower—all essential to today’s celebration—were
mentioned in Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; text-indent:
0px; ">It was during the Great Depression that the
Thanksgiving holiday was transformed into a nationalistic
origin story to bind a chaotic society experiencing economic
and social collapse. But this idea of the gift-giving
Indian, helping to establish and enrich what would become
the United States, is an insidious smoke screen meant to
obscure the fact that the very existence of the country is a
result of the looting of an entire continent and its
resources.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; text-indent:
0px; ">In 1970, on the 350<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the
English settlers—“Pilgrims”—occupying land of the Wampanoag
Nation, the United American Indians of New England led a
protest of the Thanksgiving holiday, which they called a “<a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.uaine.org/dom.htm"
target="_blank" title="(UAINE.org) - Thanksgiving: A
National Day of Mourning for Indians"
style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(121, 102,
55); ">National Day of Mourning</a>.” Every year since
that time, the National Day of Mourning has taken place at
Plymouth Rock. They rightly accuse the United States
government of having invented a myth to cover the reality of
colonialism and attempted genocide. By Thanksgiving 1970,
Native Americans from many Indigenous nations had been <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.nativevillage.org/Inspiration-/Occupation%20of%20Alcatraz%20and%20the%20Alcatraz%20Proclamation%20alcatraz_proclamation.htm"
target="_blank" title="(NativeVillage.org) - 1969
OCCUPATION OF ALCATRAZ" style="text-decoration: underline;
color: rgb(121, 102, 55); ">occupying Alcatraz Island </a>for
a year. It was the height of renewed Native resistance to US
colonial institutions and calls for sovereignty and
self-determination, which have continued and seen many
victories as well as new obstacles. In 2007, after three
decades of Indigenous Peoples’ lobbying, the United Nations
General Assembly passed the “<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf"
target="_blank" title="United Nations Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples" style="text-decoration:
underline; color: rgb(121, 102, 55); ">Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples</a>.”</p>
<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; text-indent:
0px; ">Thanksgiving needs another transformation, a day to
mourn US colonization and attempted genocide and celebrate
the survival of Native Nations through their resistance.<br>
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<p id="author" style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;
text-indent: 0px; "><strong>ABOUT THE AUTHOR</strong></p>
<p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; text-indent:
0px; "><a moz-do-not-send="true" class="asset-img-link"
href="http://www.beaconbroadside.com/.a/6a00e54ed2b7aa883301b8d0985fbf970c-popup"
style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(121, 102,
55); float: left; "><img alt="BarrieKarp_2012. Roxanne
Dunbar Ortiz, at Memorial for Shulamith Firestone at St.
Marks Church, NYC, Sunday, September 23, 2012"
class="asset asset-image
at-xid-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301b8d0985fbf970c
img-responsive" title="BarrieKarp_2012. Roxanne Dunbar
Ortiz, at Memorial for Shulamith Firestone at St. Marks
Church, NYC, Sunday, September 23, 2012"
id="4a47be0b-392a-4eb7-a824-b37e4c68b4ac"
apple-width="yes" apple-height="yes"
style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px;
border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
border-style: initial; border-color: initial; width:
100px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 5px;
margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; "
src="cid:part7.08010108.01050508@freedomarchives.org"
height="67" width="100"></a>Professor Dunbar-Ortiz has
been active in the international Indigenous movement for
more than four decades, and is author or editor of seven
books including the recently published <em><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.beacon.org/An-Indigenous-Peoples-History-of-the-United-States-P1041.aspx"
target="_blank" title="The first history of the United
States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples"
style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(121, 102,
55); ">An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United
States</a>.</em></p>
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