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Friday After No Thanksgiving

By Alexa

Whereas Thanksgiving isn't a holiday I observe, and whereas I have almost no
microexpression control; rather, the kind of "open book" face that all the polite, soft-spoken excuses and apologies can't front for the contempt and shame I feel about The Massacre For Which Thanksgiving Is Named (many thanks to Winter Rabbit), I was the Grinchette who worked all day and evening on Thanksgiving. No more faking the funk on Columbus Day or Thanksgiving. I'm not the only one.

"One of the biggest problems in the schools is that they give the image of a dead Indian from a century ago. There's no knowledge of contemporary Indians, and if there is, it tends to be from pretty racist stereotypes, not about the vibrant or progressive communities that do exist today," Bang says. "At one point, [when] my niece was in her freshman year in high school and they started doing U.S. history, her teacher brought her up in front of the class, hugged her and said in all seriousness, 'We're so glad you made it.' "

"When Native kids are at school and hear their teacher say Native Americans were savages and lived in herds, they know inherently that the teacher's wrong, but they don't necessarily feel empowered in those situations or know how to stand up for themselves," says Positive Paths coordinator Stacy Dugan. "A lot of kids do nothing, and it's the silence that's the scary thing because those kids really internalize the anger. That's where things like internalized racism, low self- esteem and the high Native dropout rates come from."

Native American Desiree Shelley: "Even if some American Indians celebrate (the holiday), there is a prevailing feeling of hurt for a lot of people," Shelley said. "We have all been assimilated and colonized. We have lost our history, our language and our culture. What do you expect?"  

The popular conception of the first Thanksgiving of 1621 is a myth. Indians taught colonists how to farm and survive in the new frontier, only to be burned at the stake several years later as the first victims of the Salem witch trials, Tayac said. The tribes of Massachusetts still have demonstrations on Thanksgiving.

It is the historical distortions, the cultural stereotypes and general ignorance about indigenous peoples that makes Thanksgiving somewhat revolting to American Indians, said Keith Colston, executive director of the Maryland Commission on Indian Affairs. Most do not celebrate Thanksgiving. If they do, it's not based on today's thoughts and ideas about the holiday, he said.

"For me personally, it is another day to get together with friends and family," said Colston, a member of the Tuscarora-Lumbee tribe of North Carolina.

But for everyone who does celebrate it, he advised: "People should know the historical background of the holidays they celebrate. Native Americans shared a feast with the Pilgrims and gave thanks for the bounty of food and for each other's company. But Thanksgiving after that was a betrayal."

It's possible, and in my opinion, admirable to make peace with Thanksgiving. If you haven't read How I Learned to Savor Thanksgiving, by Meteor Blades (Daily Kos), I can't recommend it highly enough.

And I realized, finally, that I also had missed the point that this holiday can be a healer, a remembrance of our roots but with our eyes on the present and the future. So, this year, as in the past few, I'll be together with some of my best friends, white, red and black. As we have for several Thanksgivings, we'll tell the children (and grandchildren) the true story of Thanksgiving.

The children in my family know the true story of Thanksgiving. The adults?

The Creole side of the family, here from Louisiana, are thankful to Native Americans, and have always been quick to point out that without the beneficience of Native Americans, settlers in the so-called New World would have starved and/or frozen to death and suffered illnesses and injuries, many fatal, that were alleviated or cured by the "médecine indienne."

It would be wrong to say that Thanksgiving means nothing to Cuban exiles, because from an exile's perspective, freedom is all, and thanksgiving for America is ingrained in the children of exiles. Of note, though, is that many Cubans, especially the elderly, do not consider themselves immigrants, and never will; they are exiles, or (to hear them tell it) political refugees, who are in a limbo of waiting to return to their homeland.

These attitudes don't cross generational lines much, if at all. None of the other first gens I know expect to return to Cuba in a blaze of glory someday after that hijo de cabron,  Fidel passes. Our common dream is to travel again, to see our families in la patria.

The generational divide? Here's the thing. The  country that welcomed our parents, exiles from Cuba, gave them a home and a hand up, is the very same nation that takes back its freedom or withholds it or parcels it out grudgingly toward Others and Otherness now.

For me, thanksgiving will be when the shackles of the Others, the illegally imprisoned, are broken and they, too, may offer thanks for their freedom, and with that freedom, acknowledgement and recognition of the First People whose land we live on.

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on November 28, 2008 (boomark / email).