Thanksgiving and Genocide

Thanksgiving Day, held on the last Thursday of November, is supposed to be a celebration; it’s supposed to be a time of giving thanks for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We are supposed to be thankful for what a god, creator, higher being, or our own hard work has given us. We are supposed to be thankful for family and friends.

I am thankful for basic things in life such as my family, friends, my education, and of course, all the good food that I ate today (multiple times, in fact). The Thanksgiving holiday is supposed to be celebrated in remembrance of the first meal between Pilgrims and the generalized, never fully described, Native American communities of the Northeast. In general, we are supposed to be thankful for this time and the union between whites and Native Americans.

While I am thankful for many things, I am not thankful for the genocide that my people endured and continue to endure because of white colonialism. Yes, let’s not forget that the murder, rape, and exploitation of Native American communities’ land and resources has been one of the worst disasters in human history, something that continues to be invisible in U.S. discourse, especially during the so-called day of Thanksgiving. Below, if I may, is a list of what Arthur C. Parker, editor for the Society of American Indians Quarterly Journal for several years, listed as the ways in which white colonialism robbed Native peoples. I think this is in some ways still relevant today:

1. Robbed a race of men¾the American Indian¾of their intellectual life;
2. Robbed the American Indian of his social organization
3. Robbed the American Indian of his native freedom;
4. Robbed the American Indian of his economic independence;
5. Robbed the American Indian of his moral standards and of his racial ideals;
6. Robbed the American Indian of his good name among the peoples of the earth;
7. Robbed the American Indian of a definite civic status

Excusing the gendered language and the race language (see information on the Progressive Era, especially Hazel Hertzburg’s work on the Society of American Indians, 1971). These things, therefore, hurt Native peoples tremendously:

1. Made him a man without a country;
2. Usurped his responsibility and right of acting;
3. Demeaned his manhood;
4. Destroyed his ideals;
5. Broken faith with him;
6. Humiliated his spirit;
7. Refused to listen to his petitions. 

Again, ignoring the gendered language, how thankful can Native American people be on Thanksgiving? How thankful can any U.S. citizen be knowing that there government has historically, and to some extent today, operated as one of the worst practitioners of terrorism in world history (i.e., slavery and slave trade [Natives were slaves too], stealing of land, the killing of innocent people, for example at Wounded Knee in 1890, where the U.S. army assassinated men, women, and children and left them in the frozen snow). I say, as Parker lamented, that Native people have been robbed and continue to be. During this day of thanksgiving, let’s not forget that Native American peoples died, bravely, because of the effects of colonialism. So, while many of us are thankful for life and liberty, how much can we really be thankful for?