Dr. Cedric Woods, Director for the Institute for New England Native American Studies (INENAS)
For many Americans, November conjures up images of turkeys, pies, and English colonists with large black hats with buckles, with Native Peoples joining these Puritan dissenters in a feast. President Lincoln institutionalized a uniform celebration of this American myth in 1863, a time of deep division and civil war in American society.
In his establishment of the day of Thanksgiving and Praise, Lincoln encouraged his fellow citizens when “offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also… implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.”*
Frequently, contemplation of the relationship between Native Peoples and Puritan immigrants that gave rise to the legend of Thanksgiving is neglected. Instead, Thanksgiving is a time for food, family, and shopping. If there is a thought to the Native Peoples–in this case, the Wampanoag, who served as hosts to the English immigrants –it is around what they brought to the feast, or if the feather headdresses used by the children in local plays look authentic.
Rarely do we discuss what became of those Native Peoples in subsequent years at the hands of those they sheltered. Rarely is any thought given to what became of the Indigenous hosts of the Puritans, and how they fare in their homelands today.
This ignoring of the history of Native Peoples in America led to alternative programming around this day called “The National Day of Mourning,” in Plymouth, MA. Plymouth is viewed as the location of the events around which the contemporary American Thanksgiving holiday is based (http://www.uaine.org/).
At the National Day of Mourning, many contemporary indigenous People and their allies gather to remind America that Native Peoples still exist, if only as a shadow of our former numbers before sustained contact with Europeans.
The National Day of Mourning is a call that in the middle of the day of Thanksgiving and Praise, contemporary Americans remember the harm brought by their ancestors upon the Original Peoples of the Americas through direct actions of warfare, enslavement, and dispossession, or as Lincoln would describe it, “national perverseness and disobedience.”
It is easy to become locked in the binary of which to commemorate: the near extinction of the Wampanoag and other Native Peoples via a National Day of Mourning; or the celebration of bounty and Thanksgiving that focuses only on the contemporary blessings of the American nation state, while ignoring the cultural erasure of Indigenous Peoples.
Programs like TCCS challenge faculty and students to move beyond this false binary via critical analysis of the past and present, and a visioning for the future.
As such, we examine the complexities of relationships, not just between Europeans and Native Peoples, but also African Peoples and Native Peoples, and enslaved peoples and free peoples. We explore how these interactions continue to shape who and what we are today.
In this spirit, we recently hosted a panel discussion this week: Indigenous and African Intersections: Emerging Topics, Experiences, and Shared Histories. This event was co-sponsored by TCCS, the Trotter Institute, and the Institute for New England Native American Studies.
Engaging diverse perspectives of Native elders, leaders, and a descendant of enslaved Africans of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, we will look at how the past still impacts our present, and how we can avoid repeating the mistakes of our ancestors. We will expand the conversation about how these lessons do, or should, impact future relationships with our contemporary neighbors. .
Rather than focusing on self-interest or a zero sum game of politics and power, we can develop relationships based on reciprocity and respect.
I challenge us all to think of this time of harvest as an opportunity to move beyond attacking or supporting the myth of the original Thanksgiving to develop “a concept (where Thanksgiving) [is] a state of being. [Where we] want to live in a state of thanksgiving, meaning that you use the creativity that the Creator gave you.”**
* Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler et al.
**Ramona Peters in “The Wampanoag Thanksgiving Experience,” Indian Country Today.