Thanksgiving: A National Day of Mourning for Indians

Thanksgiving: A National Day of Mourning for Indians
Posted on 24 November 2011 by Enaemaehkiw Túpac Keshena
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By Moonanum James and Mahtowin Munro. Mahtowin Munro (Lakota) and Moonanum James (Wampanoag) are co-leaders of United American Indians of New 
England.
Every year since 1970, United American 
Indians of New England have organized the National Day of Mourning 
observance in Plymouth at noon on Thanksgiving Day. Every year, hundreds of Native people and our supporters from all four directions join us. 
Every year, including this year, Native people from throughout the 
Americas will speak the truth about our history and about current issues and struggles we are involved in.
Why do hundreds of people stand out in 
the cold rather than sit home eating turkey and watching football? Do we have something against a harvest festival?
Of course not. But Thanksgiving in this 
country — and in particular in Plymouth –is much more than a harvest 
home festival. It is a celebration of the pilgrim mythology.
According to this mythology, the 
pilgrims arrived, the Native people fed them and welcomed them, the 
Indians promptly faded into the background, and everyone lived happily 
ever after.
The truth is a sharp contrast to that mythology.
The pilgrims are glorified and 
mythologized because the circumstances of the first English-speaking 
colony in Jamestown were frankly too ugly (for example, they turned to 
cannibalism to survive) to hold up as an effective national myth. The 
pilgrims did not find an empty land any more than Columbus "discovered" 
anything. Every inch of this land is Indian land. The pilgrims (who did 
not even call themselves pilgrims) did not come here seeking religious 
freedom; they already had that in Holland. They came here as part of a 
commercial venture. They introduced sexism, racism, anti-lesbian and gay bigotry, jails, and the class system to these shores. One of the very 
first things they did when they arrived on Cape Cod — before they even 
made it to Plymouth — was to rob Wampanoag graves at Corn Hill and steal as much of the Indians' winter provisions of corn and beans as they 
were able to carry. They were no better than any other group of 
Europeans when it came to their treatment of the Indigenous peoples 
here. And no, they did not even land at that sacred shrine called 
Plymouth Rock, a monument to racism and oppression which we are proud to say we buried in 1995.
The first official "Day of Thanksgiving" was proclaimed in 1637 by Governor Winthrop. He did so to celebrate the safe return of men from the Massachusetts Bay Colony who had gone to 
Mystic, Connecticut to participate in the massacre of over 700 Pequot 
women, children, and men.
About the only true thing in the whole 
mythology is that these pitiful European strangers would not have 
survived their first several years in "New England" were it not for the 
aid of Wampanoag people. What Native people got in return for this help 
was genocide, theft of our lands, and never-ending repression. We are 
treated either as quaint relics from the past, or are, to most people, 
virtually invisible.
When we dare to stand up for our rights, we are considered unreasonable. When we speak the truth about the 
history of the European invasion, we are often told to "go back where we came from." Our roots are right here. They do not extend across any 
ocean.
National Day of Mourning began in 1970 
when a Wampanoag man, Wamsutta Frank James, was asked to speak at a 
state dinner celebrating the 350th anniversary of the pilgrim landing. 
He refused to speak false words in praise of the white man for bringing 
civilization to us poor heathens. Native people from throughout the 
Americas came to Plymouth, where they mourned their forebears who had 
been sold into slavery, burned alive, massacred, cheated, and mistreated since the arrival of the Pilgrims in 1620.
But the commemoration of National Day of Mourning goes far beyond the circumstances of 1970.
Can we give thanks as we remember Native political prisoner Leonard Peltier, who was framed up by the FBI and 
has been falsely imprisoned since 1976? Despite mountains of evidence 
exonerating Peltier and the proven misconduct of federal prosecutors and the FBI, Peltier has been denied a new trial. Bill Clinton apparently 
does not feel that particular pain and has refused to grant clemency to 
this innocent man.
To Native people, the case of Peltier is one more ordeal in a litany of wrongdoings committed by the U.S. 
government against us. While the media in New England present images of 
the "Pequot miracle" in Connecticut, the vast majority of Native people 
continue to live in the most abysmal poverty.
Can we give thanks for the fact that, on many reservations, unemployment rates surpass fifty percent? Our life 
expectancies are much lower, our infant mortality and teen suicide rates much higher, than those of white Americans. Racist stereotypes of 
Native people, such as those perpetuated by the Cleveland Indians, the 
Atlanta Braves, and countless local and national sports teams, persist. 
Every single one of the more than 350 treaties that Native nations 
signed has been broken by the U.S. government. The bipartisan budget 
cuts have severely reduced educational opportunities for Native youth 
and the development of new housing on reservations, and have caused 
cause deadly cutbacks in health-care and other necessary services.
Are we to give thanks for being treated as unwelcome in our own country?
Or perhaps we are expected to give 
thanks for the war that is being waged by the Mexican government against Indigenous peoples there, with the military aid of the U.S. in the form of helicopters and other equipment? When the descendants of the Aztec, 
Maya, and Inca flee to the U.S., the descendants of the wash-ashore 
pilgrims term them 'illegal aliens" and hunt them down.
We object to the "Pilgrim Progress" 
parade and to what goes on in Plymouth because they are making millions 
of tourist dollars every year from the false pilgrim mythology. That 
money is being made off the backs of our slaughtered indigenous 
ancestors.
Increasing numbers of people are seeking alternatives to such holidays as Columbus Day and Thanksgiving. They 
are coming to the conclusion that, if we are ever to achieve some sense 
of community, we must first face the truth about the history of this 
country and the toll that history has taken on the lives of millions of 
Indigenous, Black, Latino, Asian, and poor and working class white 
people.
The myth of Thanksgiving, served up with dollops of European superiority and manifest destiny, just does not 
work for many people in this country. As Malcolm X once said about the 
African-American experience in America, "We did not land on Plymouth 
Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on us." Exactly.

http://www.peopleofcolororganize.com/category/indigenous-struggles/