![]() It is not the feel good celebration of settler and indigenous relations we are taught to believe. Learning about the realities of genocide, invasions, slavery, and war, we come to understand that Thanksgiving is above all, a colonial holiday that literally celebrates military victories and outright slaughter of Native Americans made into law and custom by the government. ![]() The United American Indians of New England meet each year at Plymouth Rock on Cole’s Hill to mourn. They gather at the feet of a statue of Grand Sachem Massasoit of the Wampanoag to remember and reflect, in the hope that America will never forget the sacrifices and tragedies of its Native people.“Learning” about Thanksgiving in our school system for some of us may be the first time we are even told about indigenous nations and people, but it is a false history. "Natives, particularly in the New England area, remember this attempted genocide as a factual part of their history and are reminded each year during the modern Thanksgiving." "To most Natives, Thanksgiving is not a celebration," tribal citizen Dennis W. Zotigh, a member of the Kiowa Gourd Clan and Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo Winter Clan, says. Since 1970, Native Americans have held a National Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving to recognize the democide of native people throughout American history. Instead, they found a celebration and they decided to stay, with their hunters bringing in five deer as a contribution.Ībout half of the 102 pilgrims who arrived the year before died the first winter, meaning native people would have nearly doubled the 50 or so pilgrims at the 1621 event.Īnd turkey was probably not part of the meal. ![]() Believing themselves to be under attack, Massasoit showed up at the settlement with warriors expecting war. In a letter written by Edward Winslow, an early Pilgrim, he states that the Wampanoags head sachem Massasoit "with some 90 men" joined the colonists for a three-day feast, but this was only after the Pilgrims began shooting their guns into the air. Well, the story is a bit more complicated than that. Many remember the elementary school lesson of the first Thanksgiving in 1621 of the Pilgrims and Wampanoag tribe coming together to have a meal together. More: What really happened during the first Thanksgiving? Date of the pilgrims first Thanksgiving In 1941, Roosevelt signed a bill making Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November. Roosevelt moved the holiday up by one week. Originally Lincoln called for Thanksgiving to be recognized on the last Thursday of November. This tradition continued until 1939 when President Franklin D. President Abraham Lincoln issued the proclamation making Thanksgiving a national holiday during the Civil War in 1863, according to the Indiana State Museum. When did it become a nationally recognized day? Arkansas and Mississippi declared their states' first ever Thanksgiving Days in 1947. ![]() Some Southern states didn't recognize the day until well into the 20th century.
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