*This article does not represent the views of Her Campus FSU
Thanksgiving can be a beautiful holiday that celebrates the people and the things in life that we tend to take for granted. Spending time with friends and family over a great meal is one of the best uses of someone’s time that I can think of. That being said, Thanksgiving is also a holiday very much rooted in American tradition and history. A history has been largely fabricated and rebranded to fit into modern American ethics so that white Americans can enjoy their indulgence in peace.
Growing up in American public schools, we have probably all heard the story of Native Americans and Pilgrims coming together to feast. Now that we’re in college, it’s about time we hear the rest of the story. The realities of the Pilgrims and Puritans’ treatment of the Native Americans needs to be acknowledged. The Pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower and quickly realized how little they knew about survival. This is when they met Tisquantum, or as English slave masters renamed him, Squanto. Squanto was a Patuxet Indian who had previously been enslaved by the English and came home only to discover his tribe had been completely wiped out by smallpox (which the English caused). For some reason, he befriended the Pilgrims on Plymouth and taught them about survival.
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The Pilgrims were not as giving as history and tradition tells us. Most people believe that many Natives came without permission and still supplied most of the food. Regardless, the Pilgrims’ racist thoughts forbade them from ever inviting them back. While the Pilgrims initially depended on the Wampanoag people for help, they quickly turned on them as they started to become independent. Puritans became officially settled a few yeas later, and the land that the Native Americans lived on was declared the property of England.
This forced taking of land from Native Americans included an array of atrocities and human rights violations, which included murder, rape, torture and enslavement. On May 26, 1637, only fourteen years after the supposed first Thanksgiving, Puritans attacked 700 Pequot People during their annual corn harvest celebration. The next day, the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared a day of Thanksgiving to thank God that they had defeated and killed the 700 men, women and children.
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Many scholars have come out and spoken against the holiday of Thanksgiving for its refusal to acknowledge the skewed history we teach and the pain that goes unnoticed due to the genocide of early Americans. Dan Brook of the University of California at Berkley refers to Thanksgiving perfectly when he calls it a “cultural and political amnesia… We do not need to feel guilty, but we do need to feel something.” This is an aspect of history that we need to talk about because the consequences of what happened still exist today. There are still people who are in pain because of the actions that took place hundreds of years ago.
Thanksgiving can still be a beautiful holiday where you enjoy your time with friends and family while indulging with food. Just take a moment to acknowledge the past, teach your relatives about the real history of Thanksgiving and be thankful for the people around you. Just remember to be sympathetic to the people who suffered.