Thanksgiving: Another Look

Sometimes Holidays or Historical Anniversaries are washed in gentle shades of Nostalgia. We get warm inside thinking about such times. It matters not that those celebrated days far pre-date our Births.

Others in our Human Family do not have such feelings. In fact, the Views of the Latter, which hold essential parts of our shared History, are often filled with Cultural Pain not known, felt or acknowledged by the Other.

To me, the conventional Thanksgiving Celebration in the United States is one of those days with marked Contrast in Views. While Thanksgiving is much more broadly celebrated as Gratitude for Harvest both historically and worldwide, Thanksgiving in my Country is often linked to Pilgrims and Plymouth Rock.

I am reminded of the routine and often whimsical exercises of my Childhood as Thanksgiving Day approached. When I was a young Girl growing up in the 1950s, my Classmates and I would draw pictures or cast plays of Pilgrims and Indians under the guiding hands of our teachers.

I was especially enchanted by the Pilgrims' Broad White Collars which never seemed to show Wrinkle or Soil on their Stark Black Backgrounds. Turkeys were prominent visual images. We made them out of all kinds of media, including Construction Paper, Apples and Pine Cones. I carefully carried them home and those little awkward childhood sculptures made their way onto the center of our dining room table.

As an Adult now at 60, I have had the Privilege over my Life of looking at this Holiday in different ways. That Privilege comes from sitting with and exploring Views with Another, Views that caused me Discomfort in the place where I used to sit complacently. That Privilege of Being with Another and Exploring Difference marks a Freedom which allows me to live and be present in the World in a Different Way.

In December 1620, 102 Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock. They were a poor and hungry lot after Weeks at Sea. Their Winter Arrival placed them in an alien land of which they had no knowledge and were at considerable disadvantage. Half died within a few months due to Disease and Hunger. More would surely have died except that the Native People, whose customs centered on Peace and Giving, fed the Weary Travelers through the Winter.

Enter Squanto, an Indian name familiar to us from Thanksgiving lore. Squanto, with others, had been kidnapped by Europeans some 15 years before the arrival of the Pilgrims and taken to Europe for display, Christianization, and whatever practical uses his Captors would design. When Squanto returned to his Homeland which was the place the Pilgrims would settle, his entire Tribe (the Patuxet) had died from disease.

As the Pilgrims moved from traumas of settlement and Winter into Spring, the Native People taught them vital agricultural methods. The English Speaking Squanto held critical roles in their settling into their new Homeland, including: communication with area Tribes, crafting Agreements, and learning agricultural specifics in their new home. Growing food did not come easy to them.

While freely offering food and skill essential to the newcomers, the Native People looked at the Pilgrims with suspicion due to previous contact experiences of Indian Tribes with European. Their offering of these critical supports was simply the way they were.

However, the Pilgrims looked at the Indian People differently. The Native Peoples were viewed as less than Human, Savages requiring Christian conversion, and objects or impediments to meet the desires of those newly arrived upon their Shores.

The arrival of the Pilgrims is only one episode marking the 1st footsteps of Europeans upon this Continent. Many other arrival points could be noted, perhaps most notably Columbus "discovering" the Americas on his way to India in 1492. He accidentally found a Continent which had been home to Native Peoples for Millennia.

European Peoples arrival brought great pain to the Indian People over the centuries following contact. It is more pain than I can completely know. That pain came from: taking Land that was their Home, rampant diseases introduced accidentally or on purpose for which Native People had no resistance, forced displacement or removal of Indians to lands farther West, Treaties subject to change, massacres called victories, forced location onto reservations, view that Indians were wards of the State, slaughter of Buffalo to eradicate Native Peoples, violation of Indians' sacred beliefs and burial sites, white washing History reducing Native presence and contributions to our shared story.

Thanksgiving and Columbus Day hold fond memories for European Peoples that at last we have found a home. These same days hold memories for many Native Peoples that are of marked contrast and for good reason. And on these special commemorative days, we sit side by side in the place that each of us call home.

Pondering these things this Thanksgiving gives me pause. According to Family Story, my husband Richard and daughter Melanie are descendants of those travelers who placed their dreams upon the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock. At the same time, they are also descendants of Native Peoples of this Continent.

When we sit at our Thanksgiving Table, we have representatives of those peoples who had made their homes on this continent. I wonder if the Pilgrims had any idea that at some future point their lines would merge with Native People and we too would sit together at the Thanksgiving Table. I wonder if their approach and treatment of Native People would have been different.

I do not sit on the sidelines of this story. Along with Richard, my early relatives were Homesteaders of this County. In the practices of their times, conflict was dealt with by force; this Land was supposedly wiped clean of Native People so that those early Settlers might feel “safe”. My Great Aunt Lula Myers Hart will always be a great influence upon my life; she was born in 1883, the year when the Buffaloes who had numbered 40-60 million pre-contact were reduced to 1,000.

So what does this mean for my family and me on Butterfly Hill Farm? While my interest in my European ancestry is intense, I ponder other questions with equal intensity: What are the Stories of this Place? Whose Footsteps walked here? What are the Stories of Native Peoples who lived upon this Land? How can I honor that Presence in the Land I now call my Home? While my European ancestry brought views of Nature as object and use, what would Native People want me to know and be to be a Benign Presence here? What are the Lessons of the Past that give us all Foundation for walking into a New Day?

I am open and eager to learn.
~~~~~
Selected references:

The Meaning of Columbus Day (www.worldwatch.org/node/5902, October 21, 2008)

National Heritage Day Honors American Indians (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081128/ap_on_re_us/american_indian_day, November 28, 2008)

Thanksgiving: A Native American View
(http://www.alternet.org/story/4391/, November 27, 2008)

Happy Thanksgiving! The Native American Perspective: First Thanksgiving? NOT!
(http://www.genealogyforum.rootsweb.com/gfaol/Thanksgiving/NAPerspective.htm, November 28, 2008)

Thanksgiving: A Loaded Holiday for Many Native-Americans
(http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/11/27-1, November 28, 2008)

Squanto
(http://www.nativeamericans.com/Squanto.htm, November 25, 2008)

The Pilgrims' 1621 Thanksgiving
(http://www.nativeamericans.com/Thanksgiving.htm, November 25, 2008)

This list would be woefully incomplete without noting the Native American People and others Exploring their History who have been Great Teachers along my Path. Most of my associations have come through my journey, query and work on the Northern Plains of this Continent. These Teachers have helped me open the door to what for me is no longer a Cell.