UofA Facebook Gurus Post Reminder Of True Nature Of Thanksgiving

Illustrations of the first Thanksgiving often are historically inaccurate, such as this 1932 painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris. The outfits the Pilgrims are shown wearing are wrong, and the Wampanoag did not wear feathered war bonnets, nor would they have been sitting on the ground. (Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

On Wednesday, the social media gurus at the University of Arizona posted a lesson on the true meaning of Thanksgiving. For many of the University’s “friends,” the message: “the day is a reminder of a dark history that is rarely told in its entirety,” was not a welcome one.

The University of Arizona Facebook post featured the piece, 3 Things You Should Know About Thanksgiving, by Stacy Pigott with the University’s Communications Department.

In her piece, Pigott features the work of Ronald Trosper, a professor of American Indian studies at the University of Arizona, who gave a presentation titled “The Real Meaning of Thanksgiving” as part of Native American History Month.

While Trosper indicts the Pilgrims and their progeny as ignorant colonists with little to offer, Pigott notes that America “it isn’t the only country charged with settler colonialism. Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa also are examples of countries formed by settler colonialism.”

Maybe we should be grateful that ours is not the only nation founded by thugs.

Although the UofA gurus dismiss the holiday as nothing more than a day of celebration for privileged conquerors, there are some who find a way to embrace the spirit of the holiday and feel gratitude:

2017 Thanksgiving Day Message From Navajo Nation President Begaye

On behalf of the Office of the President and Vice President, we want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. As with many of our people, we will spend the day with family. When we come together as a family, as a clan and as Diné we are part of something far greater than ourselves.

Thanksgiving is a time for us to reinforce K’é and the traditional teachings that strengthen our ability to survive and prosper with dignity. Thanksgiving is a time for us to gather around the dinner table in the sanctuary of love and compassion with the people we care for most in this world.

We wish for everyone to have a safe and healthy holiday, free of drugs and alcohol. Please travel safely along the roads and highways as you visit your friends and relatives. Enjoy the company of family and check on your elders. Make sure they have food, firewood and other necessities. Take time to look after one another and please take care of yourselves.

During this season, we should all be thankful for everything we have and remember our friends and family who could use a helping hand. We thank everyone for giving their time and resources to the benefit of others, including our staff, tribal enterprises, charity organizations and community members.

Thanksgiving is also a time for us to give thanks, most of all, for our ancestors and elders for their wisdom and guidance. We thank past leaders and veterans for holding true to honor, respect and decency – and for leading the path for us to follow.

We are thankful to lead strong and resilient people throughout our chapters all across the Nation. We see that the strength of the Nation lies in the prosperity of our people and we are prosperous. We are thriving and as a tribal nation, we are looked upon as a leader among tribal nations because we are willing to rise up and stand together.

For all of this, we are thankful.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving and God bless you all.

No one would suggest that the true history of this nation’s founding should be ignored or “whitewashed.” However, to ignore the good and dismiss our ancestors as hapless, ruthless, and otherwise only flawed is not honest either.

In his piece, The First Thanksgiving Was Nothing Like What You Were Taught, John Daniel Davidson writes, “The actual history of the first Thanksgiving is of course nothing like the grade-school story—it’s far more interesting and complex. While it undermines the bowdlerized, multicultural narrative of peaceful Indians and well-meaning Puritans living together in harmony, it also informs a radically more nuanced understanding of the world the Pilgrims found when they landed at Plymouth in December 1620.”

Pigott’s piece offers anything but a “nuanced understanding of the world, and if Trosper’s work does, then Pigott has done him a disservice.

President Begaye’s gratitude to “ancestors and elders for their wisdom and guidance,” is something we should all feel. We should give thanks for all of our ancestors because together, in their own way, they created a remarkable country and instilled in most of us a desire to be better, and most importantly, the ability to be grateful.

3 Things You Should Know About Thanksgiving
By Stacy Pigott

Year after year, elementary school children create paper turkeys and dress up as Pilgrims and Indians to re-create the original Thanksgiving feast. It is portrayed as a great celebration between survivors of the Mayflower, who established Plymouth Colony, and friendly Native Americans from the Wampanoag tribe.

Ronald Trosper facilitated a discussion on the real meaning of Thanksgiving as part of Native American Heritage Month.

The quaint retelling of that Thanksgiving feast was perpetuated by Abraham Lincoln, whose proclamation on Oct. 3, 1863, made the last Thursday in November “a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens” for “blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies,” and a peaceful end to the Civil War.

For many Native Americans, though, Thanksgiving is not synonymous with blessings and praise. Rather, the day is a reminder of a dark history that is rarely told in its entirety.

On Monday, Ronald Trosper, professor of American Indian studies at the University of Arizona, gave a presentation titled “The Real Meaning of Thanksgiving” as part of Native American History Month. The event, sponsored by the Native American Student Association, discussed Thanksgiving and its ties to settler colonialism.

According to GlobalSocietyTheory.com, “Settler colonial invasion is a structure, not an event: Settler colonialism persists in the ongoing elimination of indigenous populations, and the assertion of state sovereignty and juridical control over their lands.”

“Is Thanksgiving an innocent celebration or are there some undertones that need to be addressed?” Trosper asked. “The process of this spreading of settlers across the United States has been described by scholars as settler colonialism, and it has some particular characteristics. The issue is, which of these characteristics are illustrated by the Thanksgiving celebration?”

Test your knowledge of Thanksgiving history by considering these true-or-false statements:

On Nov. 23, Native Americans will gather in Plymouth, Massachusetts, to commemorate a National Day of Mourning, rather than Thanksgiving. A similar gathering will take place in San Francisco, California, on Alcatraz Island. (Photo: United American Indians of New England)

1. The settlers respected the indigenous peoples’ unique culture and religion.

FALSE.

“When Indians harvested, the thanks went to the land and the beings that provided themselves as food. That’s a very fundamental indigenous belief, that we thank those beings that support our livelihood,” Trosper said. “Then at dinner there was no prayer, they just started eating. They already thanked the land when they harvested. And they did not thank the Lord for providing the food, because the food came from the land, it did not come from the Christian God. At Thanksgiving, people celebrate the Christian God.”

Native Americans did not pray to a Christian God, although the settlers would try to change that. One of the characteristics of settler colonialism is the settlers’ attempt to convert indigenous peoples to the settlers’ religion. The settlers, who had left England due to religious dissention, brought their religion with them to the New World.

From Lincoln’s proclamation to modern-day traditions, many Americans view Thanksgiving as a day to give thanks for their blessings, often in the form of a pre-feast religious prayer. In contrast, many Native Americans did, and still do, celebrate the fall harvest.

2. Thanksgiving was the beginning of a long friendship between the Pilgrims and the Indians.

FALSE.

“A lot of people have put forth images of what Thanksgiving is really about, seeming to say that Natives were welcoming the settlers and providing them food. Well, they were generous and they did provide food, but it was not reciprocated,” Trosper said. “Eventually in New England, where Thanksgiving was said to be, the settlers pushed the Indians aside. That’s where people lose the history. They don’t know about King Philip’s War.”

After the initial Thanksgiving feast, tensions rose between the settlers and indigenous peoples and reached a breaking point by 1675, resulting in King Philip’s War. Spanning three years, the conflict raged throughout New England, destroying 12 towns and almost completely destroying the Wampanoag tribe and their allies, the Narragansett tribe from Rhode Island.

“The settlers arrive, take control of the land and push the indigenous people off, and often they just eliminate. It’s not a question of sharing the land,” Trosper said, pointing to another characteristic of settler colonialism. “Very often the indigenous people said, ‘We’re happy to share the land with you if you accept our sovereignty over it and if you take care of it the way we want you to take care of it.’ But that wasn’t part of the picture.”

3. The settlers learned agricultural practices from the Indians.

TRUE.

Another characteristic of settler colonialism is the settlers adopting a means of making a living that they have learned from the indigenous peoples. In the case of the Pilgrims and Indians, that was agriculture.

“Thanksgiving shows pictures of Indians providing food to the settlers. That illustrates there were people on the land and farming the land,” Trosper said. “Here in Arizona when the settlers came, the area around the Gila River was agricultural and the Pima Indians were providing food that they raised in their farms. They expanded their agriculture when the settlers arrived.”

Even the UA campus sits on land that formerly was farmed by Native Americans.

“There was a mission here, and the missionaries had to learn how to farm the land from the O’odham,” Trosper related. “The fact that this area was occupied by agricultural Indians is little known.”

In the late 19th century, settlers dammed the Gila River and diverted the water from the Indians’ farms to their own. Without lifegiving water to sustain their crops, Native American communities were impoverished and their reservations had little water.

“On Thanksgiving, the settlers are celebrating the land and what the land produces, and how did they get that land? They took it,” Trosper said. “Thanksgiving seems to be a celebration of taking the land away.”

In addition to losing their land, Native Americans often paid a large price in human life, as well.

“Native Americans who have gone to state schools and done activities in their grade school classrooms celebrating Thanksgiving may have started to appreciate Thanksgiving as an American thing and not realize that it has negative undertones,” Trosper said. “The general public knows what is told to them when they were in grade school, and people celebrated and made little turkey things and such. But if they dressed up as Indians to celebrate Thanksgiving, well, that’s addressed as one of the characteristics of settler colonialism. The settlers pretend to be Indians as a way to make themselves indigenous.

“But Native Americans who have been raised in a family that’s more aware probably have parents who have explained the real history behind Thanksgiving and said it’s nice to celebrate the harvest in the fall. We have to realize that Thanksgiving has these negative overtones, and that it denies there was so much taking away from Indians, because it’s a very happy celebration. It looks like the Indians and the settlers are friendly. But that’s a denial of what the reality was of the way that settler colonialism occurred.”

While Thanksgiving is a truly American holiday, it isn’t the only country charged with settler colonialism. Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa also are examples of countries formed by settler colonialism.