Most people know Thanksgiving as the holiday of gratitude, where families can gather together and reconnect with one another, explained Dr. Kelli Mosteller, the Citizen Potawatomi Nation’s Cultural Heritage Center director on the Potawatomi Nation website. However, she said the Indigenous population of America does not view Thanksgiving as such. On the website, Mosteller said, “[Thanksgiving] just disregards (the centuries of brutality) against Native Americans and chooses to take this one tiny snapshot, and in the world of social media, it puts all the pretty filters on it so that it doesn’t look the way it truly did.”
Mele Tauataina, a freshman majoring in communications from Utah and a part of Hopi and the Northern Ute Tribe, said her family does not celebrate the concept of Thanksgiving. “I just feel like [Thanksgiving] is a romanticized and commercialized holiday for people to talk about how America is so great and accepting when really we’re just pushing the Trail of Tears [or forced displacement on Native Americans] away,” Tauataina says.
Expressing a similar frustration, Jackie Morris, a senior graduating in social work, vocalized her love-hate relationship with Thanksgiving. “I don’t like the narrative that there was peace and harmony, because it glosses over the genocide, the death, the pain, and the trauma that is still affecting Native people,” she said.
History of Thanksgiving
The Thanksgiving myth, according to Claire Bugos from Smithsonian Magazine, is a narrative of friendly Natives welcoming European people to America, teaching them how to live in this new place, dine with them, and then disappear. She said they handed off America to white people so they can create a great nation dedicated to liberty. Bugos declared it’s about Natives conceding to colonialism.
Bugos discussed the inaccuracies of the story stating history did not begin for Natives when the Europeans arrived. Instead people have been in the Americas for over 12,000 years and, according to some Native traditions, since the beginning of time. Bugos continued, the arrival of the Mayflower is not some first-contact episode, stating that the Wampanoags had a century of contact with Europeans. She explained it was bloody and involved slave raids by Europeans.
In the article, Bugos said this false narrative uses a shared dinner as a symbol of colonialism and has it backward. Instead, she explained the Wampanoag chief, Massasoit Ousamequin, reached out to the English at Plymouth and wanted an alliance with them, not for friendship but rather, saw the English as an opportunity to fend off his tribal rivals since his people had been eradicated by epidemic disease.
According to National Geographic, the name “Thanksgiving” originated from a Boston publisher named Alexander Young in 1841. National Geographic explained when Young published his book in a footnote, he quoted the meal the “first Thanksgiving,” and the name stuck since then.
Thanksgiving in America
Mosteller said many Natives now view Thanksgiving as a way to gather with loved ones, leaving the "original" meaning behind and adapting to the idea of gathering with family and spending time with loved ones.
Marissa Bowens, a member of the Navajo Nation and a junior majoring in social work from Georgia, says her family uses Thanksgiving as a time to gather together at her grandmother’s home. Bowens shared it is a tradition in her family for each person to be in charge of bringing something to the Thanksgiving table, and Bowens said she makes sweet potato pie every year. “I love it, to be around my family, especially family I haven't seen in a long time,” she expressed.
According to Mosteller, many Natives practice the gratitude season through festivals, special meals, and harvests without referencing it as “Thanksgiving.”
Tauataina shared the same sentiment of celebrating the season of gratitude but not celebrating Thanksgiving. She said her family uses this time to sit down and eat together. She said her mom makes Native fried bread, and they eat turkey and freshly baked macaroni. What makes Thanksgiving good is that “it sets aside time so that you can be around your loved ones,” said Tauataina.
In an article published by Indian Country Today, Michelle Tirado said Thanksgiving Day is a time of grief for Native Americans. Tirado explained many Natives gather at Cole’s Hill near Plymouth Rock and remember the restitution experienced for the past 400-plus years through the National Day of Mourning. “[For] many Native Americans, the holiday invokes a legacy of racism, violence, genocide and mistreatment. In the 1970s, right around the bicentennial of the United States, Native people began to gather on the holiday to hold a day of mourning instead - a tradition known as Unthanksgiving Day,” said the National Geographic website.
Rethinking ways of celebrating
Morris expressed during this Thanksgiving season, it is important to remember and recognize the history of Thanksgiving, to take initiative, and learn. She encouraged others to use this time to express gratitude but also, not to forget to give thanks every day. “If you really want to do something … you have to do your own research and take the time,” she said.
Tauataina stated it is important to have empathy and be mindful that Indigenous people have been here before colonization. She also emphasized the importance of giving credit to Indigenous people everywhere, for the hard work and love they put into each other, to mother earth and God. She encouraged others to “stop romanticizing and commercializing Thanksgiving, [and] instead respect and acknowledge that [Natives are] still here [and have been here].”