Daniel Otero

A period of great controversy began to arise with the celebration of Thanksgiving. It was first enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1789. But it was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who established the holiday to be commemorated during the fourth week of November. By the 1970s, the Native American population of the United States started calling out for its political leaders to have a clearer understanding of what this festivity of remembrance meant to them and the memory wasn’t a pleasant one.

Let’s begin with a little background. The Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock from England in 1620 to escape religious intolerance and persecution. However, the people who came were even more intolerant against the local population. To state the obvious honestly, the relationship between the English and Native Americans began as one which was quite unstable since its origins.

There was already fear and mistrust sowed by the religious fanatics who immigrated into the Americas. At best, the Caucasian people began calling the Native Americans “Indians” (a wrong term that was mistakenly given by Christopher Columbus who thought he had arrived in India instead of the Americas). But more often than not, they (the English) used the demeaning racist word of “savages” to undermine and cheat them. The new English arrivals deeply feared the locals, and basically one thing led to another resulting in deep-rooted hatred and violence.

The majority of times, the Native American population were met by their white counterparts at the end of a musket, and they would kill locals without any provocation. On top of that, the English already had notions about their superiority and with that came the addition of fire power in the form of gunpowder and cannon.

This fear continued to grow as more settlers came and took (conquered) the tribal lands for themselves. There was no asking; they (the English) took what wasn’t theirs to take! This occurrence happened throughout North, Central and South America for centuries by the empires of England, Portugal, France and Spain.

The colonizers came into the future land of the United States where 20 million Native American peoples lived. By the time the first Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621, the Pilgrims were sharing this “joyful” celebration with the Wampanoag Indians. Many of the old historians have yet to reconcile with the fact that the Pilgrims and Native Americans shared this first festivity under the banner of deep mistrust. For the Native Americans it was supposed to be one of unity, to strive for peace against any future warfare and violence.

With the arrival of these conquerors came the “beginning of the end” for the Native population and the start of their suffering genocide. The Pilgrims didn’t only bring warfare, but they brought with them diseases like smallpox. If the Natives weren’t shot to death, they died of illness. Then, as the colonizers came, they brought whiskey; in the process of bringing alcohol, they also addicted the Native Americans to drinking spirits.

Thanksgiving originally was created in the spirit of brotherhood and to unite peoples but also caused an even bigger distrust and rift by the Native American tribes towards the whites.

That is why, when wishing any person from the Native American nations a “Happy Thanksgiving,” be careful!

Because the answer you will get is the following, “What? Thanksgiving! More like, ‘Thanks-taking’!”