December 1, 1987
Thanksgiving's true creed
By Carolyn Helmke
Holidays are the days most everyone enjoys. If you work or go to school, you probably get a day off. If you are the festive type, the chance to put a cardboard turkey in your window or hand out candy hearts with dumb sayings on them is your cup of tea. Some holidays, like New Year’s Eve are sort of meaningless but great fun.
Other holidays champion our nation’s independence (July 4) while our government squashes other nations’ attempts at self-determination and freedom from foreign rule, while Halloween is for greedy children who love candy, enterprising dentists and those who like to dress up in silly costumes.
And what is Thanksgiving all about? We are taught as children in our schools about the dinner party that the pilgrims and the Indians had.
We are taught that the native inhabitants (the Indians) welcomes the European “pilgrims”—whom we are taught are everyone’s ancestors—with open arms, and that the natives delighted in sharing their land with their new friends from overseas. We are led to believe that the European invasion was not only welcomed but that the subsequent dominance of English settlers was God’s will and wish.
Thus, as good Americans today, we are expected to have a Thanksgiving dinner which honors the tradition established by the pilgrims and Indians. This means a nuclear family, a big Butterball turkey, lots of good food and drink and a prayer (said by the father from the head of the table) thanking God for giving this wonderful country.
Unfortunately, this tradition is a gross distortion of history and an insult to the people who inhabited North America before the European conquest. These people, known as Indians, comprising many different tribes, were knocked off their land by the “White people” and were murdered in order to clear space for more European settlers. The history of the Native American struggle to retain their land and community is a heart-wrenching battle against imperialism and conquest.
This story does not get better with time. The Native American people left today are victims of an age-old racist government which has continually broken treaty rights and removed the existing reservations from the control of the rightful owners.
And all of this history is buried under the tales of friendship between the pilgrims and Indians, peaceful dinner parties and the lie that White European settlers deserved the land.
Thus, as you ate your turkey and drank your Chablis, I hope you remembered to clink glasses together in a toast to imperialism and genocide, the true Thanksgiving creed.
