The Truth about Thanksgiving

*** This post has been edited to included some source material since some people believed it to be inaccurate. Also this post is not intending to "slam" Thanksgiving. I have no problem with the holiday and think the modern message of togetherness and thankfulness is a positive one. I am just tired of the victors getting to write an inaccurate version of history that demeans and mocks an entire culture.***


So after a long hiatus from posting I'm back! I've been really busy with school and work and life in general so I haven't had time to sit down and come up with a concrete idea for posting. Today I finally came up with one. I'd like to talk about the holiday Thanksgiving and discuss where it really comes from and what it says about our society. First off celebrating Thanksgiving as a way to be thankful for what you have is a great thing. There is absolutely nothing  wrong with that. However, Thanksgiving is one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted holidays in America.
When we are in school our teachers often show us images of cartoonish pilgrims and Native Americans hugging it out and eating together. We are told that the first Thanksgiving was to celebrate making it through some hard times and to celebrate the unity that came from the native peoples helping the settlers survive and learn to grown their own crops on American soil. This could not be further from the truth. Thanksgiving was originally used to celebrate the successful slaughter and land theft of the Pequot tribe. What really happened was a group of pilgrims went in and committed a massive genocide on hundreds of men, women and children because they wanted their land. This was after the Native peoples did in fact help them learn to survive.
You see, there weren't any Native peoples at the table celebrating with them. Further more the depictions of Native peoples that we see in those cartoons and coloring books we pass out to children are not only racist but they are a sad attempt at culturally appropriating Native culture and trying to hide a very dark part in our history. The Native peoples that are alive today have a huge problem with the way they are depicted. The depictions make fun of their religious dress and make them look like a stereotyped vision of what white people associate them with. How would you like to be depicted as a barely clothed person with a large nose, buck teeth and incorrectly used religious garb? You wouldn't. You would be offended, as you should be.
 Native peoples have been trying for years to bring attention to the misappropriation of them in cartoons and sports teams and Thanksgiving, but it always falls on def ears. Americans today supposedly live in a color blind society with no racism, but this is a lie. With people still celebrating Thanksgiving in such a disrespectful manner this is incredibly evident. We can still take a holiday to be thankful for what we have but we need to be mindful and respectful of other cultures in the process. It is not acceptable to have this insensitive and inaccurate depiction of an entire people in our culture. America needs to wake up and realize that there is no excuse for racism and cultural appropriation, not even during a holiday.


Click to view sources: Greener, Richard. The True Story of Thanksgiving
                                  Bates, Susan. The REAL Story of Thanksgiving
                                  Tristan, Rense.com. The Dark Historical Roots Of Our "Thanksgiving"