Thanksgiving is not that different (on a surface level) from
Jewish holidays every week—you eat too much food and sit around with people you
enjoy or find annoying. It's nice to have an extra holiday. I’m all for days
off, cooking, eating tons of potatoes and squash, and watching movies, but I
wish Thanksgiving wasn’t rooted in the oppression of indigenous peoples !! I
don’t know enough about this to ad-lib on my own, but pasting some info from a
brilliant collective of womxn of color, led by Indigenous womxn.
“‘Thanksgiving’ erases settler colonial histories of
violence against Native peoples, including the Wampanoag, who were at the first
so-called ‘Thanksgiving’ meal in the illustrious stories, movies, and tall
tales we’ve been fed. After numerous massacres, selling Wampanoag peoples into
slavery, decimating their numbers through disease, capturing them to be guides,
and then King Philip’s War in 1675-1676 (which killed and enslaved thousands
more Native peoples), the actual “Thanksgiving” meal was held in celebration of
the Pilgrims’ horrific ‘victory.’”
The realities of Indigenous (and all) oppression ought to
coexist with American rituals. It's too bad that right now the plight of others
is embedded so deeply in them, and we are indoctrinated (whether inadvertently
or purposefully) to believe things like Thanksgiving are benign.
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