This article was written, researched and produced entirely on colonized land, originally inhabited by the Potawatomi and Erie tribes.
By Jalen Garrison, Delta College Student Submission
When imagining Thanksgiving, the majority of folks in The United States might conjure a romantic image in their mind. Forests set ablaze with fiery hues of red, yellow, and orange, as leaves fall from the trees. Family gatherings indoors to escape the unrelenting chill that reminds you that winter is just around the corner. Time spent in the company of loved ones, possibly with football in the background, and with a meal that tastes just as delightful as the memories attached to it.
When asked how they imagine Thanksgiving, Delta students responded with similar descriptions:
“Family, love, and food. I have a lot of happy memories of my mom making rolls,” Ja’vion Blackwell said.
“It’s a wonderful excuse to get off of work and spend time with family,” Carleah DuRussell said.
Among all of the students I asked, they all shared a deep sentimental attachment to holiday, alongside a romanticized familial memory. All but one that is.
“I don’t really like to think about history,” Maddie Williams said.
This response begs the question: What is it about the history of the holiday that disturbed this student so much that they feel the need to block all thoughts of its origins out of their mind?
To find out, I turkey trotted my way back through duck territory. This time, I asked a more specific question: What do you know about the history of Thanksgiving?
To my surprise: the ducks laid an egg.
“I don’t know why, but it has something to do with pilgrims if I’m not mistaken,” Niyah Miller said. “Didn’t the pilgrims and the… what were they?”
“Didn’t we eat Native Americans?” Tyler Rancour asked.
While there was an incredibly shallow and miseducated understanding of the pilgrims and their history, there was almost no acknowledgement of the folks who were allegedly cannibalized. Despite being the alleged victims of an atrocity in this story, nobody seemed to want to acknowledge their existence, while clearly knowing they were there. To get a better understanding of the indigenous perspective on Thanksgiving, I spoke to historian, educator and activist Heather Bruegl.
Bruegl is a first line descendant of the Stockbridge-Munsee tribe and a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. She researches and teaches United States history with an emphasis on including perspectives of indigenous populations that are often neglected when U.S history is taught.
When asked what her personal connection to Thanksgiving is, Bruegl responded:
“I feel absolutely nothing. I don’t celebrate Thanksgiving,” she responded. “I think there is a bigger history people need to learn, and if people knew about it, they’d think about (Thanksgiving) in a different way.”
Bruegl feels that there’s a closet full of skeletons that have yet to be addressed in regard to Thanksgiving.
“I think it’s important that if we’re going to have a day that bears that name, because of something that happened in the past, that we engage with the history of the celebration in its entirety,” Bruegl said. “We at least have to have a conversation about it; recognize what it was for, what it meant and the harm it’s caused for centuries.”
Bruegl talked about how Thanksgiving has been used throughout United States history as a celebration of the genocide of indigenous people.
“I know people tend to trace the first Thanksgiving back to the Civil War when Lincoln declared a National Day of Thanksgiving, but there had been many thanksgivings prior to that. So, we’re really celebrating a myth,” Bruegl said. “If you consider the Pequot War, and the genocide of the Pequot people, there was a feast of Thanksgiving that happened afterwards by the colonists.”
What she’s referring to is known by many as the Pequot massacre. In 1637 near present day Groton, Conn., over 700 people of the Pequot tribe gathered for their annual Green Corn Festival. In the early hours of the morning, Dutch and English colonizers set fire to the village. The colonizers, having the village surrounded, shot any and all who tried to flee from the fires. The only survivors were warriors out pillaging who returned to find their families and village burned to cinders.
The next day the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared a “Day of Thanksgiving” to celebrate the genocide.
“While I am all for having a day where we gather with family and friends and are thankful for life–I think that’s wonderful, I think that’s beautiful–I think we also then need to talk about the history of this day that we all seem to gather on,” Bruegl said. “To me it represents violence, genocide, loss of land, erasure of culture, all of these things.”
Bruegl feels that the reason why more people don’t recognize how painful this holiday can be for some is due in large part to miseducation. Indigenous history isn’t made a priority in public school education, and that same system uses our current celebrations to cover up the atrocities of the past.
“I think people generally think about this story they’re taught in elementary school: The pilgrims came over on a boat, had a feast, and they invited the Wampanoags over. Everything is beautiful and harmonious. We take this story and apply it to things we’re grateful for,” Bruegl said. “I think it’s an image of unity, masking a reality of colonization. We have to have this sugar-coated idea of Thanksgiving that centers around unity, community and things like that; but only because we can’t talk about the United States being a settler colonial power and remaining a settler colony today.”
Despite hundreds of years of colonization, genocide and destruction, the indigenous community continues to celebrate a shared culture. In spite of their collective pain, gratitude for a shared human experience has kept the indigenous community connected after centuries. Indigenous or otherwise, we don’t need a single day to be thankful for everything life has to offer.
Bruegl has a message when thinking about not just Thanksgiving, but anything including the indigenous people of the United States:
“Indigenous people are still here. We are still here, walking around; we still hold offices and positions of power. There are indigenous folks in Congress and in the Presidential Cabinet. We are thriving communities, and the genocide didn’t work. So, I truly do wish that more people would recognize that.”
