Thanksgiving: A National Day of Mourning for Indians

[Tufara Waller Muhammad]

**Following are excerpts from a statement written by Mahtowin Munro
(Lakota) and Moonanum James (Wampanoag), co-leaders of United American
Indians of New England. Read the entire statement at www.uaine.org.**

Every year since 1970, United American Indians of New England have
organized the National Day of Mourning observance in Plymouth at noon
on Thanksgiving Day. Every year, hundreds of Native people and our
supporters from all four directions join us. Every year, including
this year, Native people from throughout the Americas will speak the
truth about our history and about current issues and struggles we are
involved in.

Why do hundreds of people stand out in the cold rather than sit home
eating turkey and watching football? Do we have something against a
harvest festival?

Of course not. But Thanksgiving in this country—and in particular in
Plymouth—is much more than a harvest home festival. It is a
celebration of pilgrim mythology.

According to this mythology, the pilgrims arrived, the Native people
fed them and welcomed them, the Indians promptly faded into the
background, and everyone lived happily ever after.

The pilgrims are glorified and mythologized because the circumstances
of the first English-speaking colony in Jamestown were frankly too
ugly (for example, they turned to cannibalism to survive) to hold up
as an effective national myth.

The pilgrims did not find an empty land any more than Columbus
"discovered" anything. Every inch of this land is Indian land. The
pilgrims (who did not even call themselves pilgrims) did not come here
seeking religious freedom; they already had that in Holland.

They came here as part of a commercial venture. They introduced
sexism, racism, anti-lesbian and -gay bigotry, jails and the class
system to these shores. One of the very first things they did when
they arrived on Cape Cod—before they even made it to Plymouth—was to
rob Wampanoag graves at Corn Hill and steal as much of the Indians'
winter provisions of corn and beans as they were able to carry.

They were no better than any other group of Europeans when it came to
their treatment of the Indigenous peoples here. And, no, they did not
even land at that sacred shrine called Plymouth Rock, a monument to
racism and oppression which we are proud to say we buried in 1995.

The first official "Day of Thanksgiving" was proclaimed in 1637 by
Governor Winthrop. He did so to celebrate the safe return of men from
the Massachusetts Bay Colony who had gone to Mystic, Conn., to
participate in the massacre of over 700 Pequot women, children and
men.

About the only true thing in the whole mythology is that these pitiful
European strangers would not have survived their first several years
in "New England" were it not for the aid of Wampanoag people. What
Native people got in return for this help was genocide, theft of our
lands and never-ending repression. We are either treated as quaint
relics from the past or are, to most people, virtually invisible.

When we dare to stand up for our rights, we are considered
unreasonable. When we speak the truth about the history of the
European invasion, we are often told to "go back where we came from."
Our roots are right here. They do not extend across any ocean.

National Day of Mourning began in 1970 when a Wampanoag man, Wamsutta
Frank James, was asked to speak at a state dinner celebrating the
350th anniversary of the pilgrim landing. He refused to speak false
words in praise of the white man for bringing civilization to us poor
heathens. Native people from throughout the Americas came to Plymouth
where they mourned their forebears who had been sold into slavery,
burned alive, massacred, cheated and mistreated since the arrival of
the Pilgrims in 1620.

But the commemoration of National Day of Mourning goes far beyond the
circumstances of 1970.

Can we give thanks as we remember Native political prisoner Leonard
Peltier, who was framed up by the FBI and has been falsely imprisoned
since 1976? Despite mountains of evidence exonerating Peltier and the
proven misconduct of federal prosecutors and the FBI, Peltier has been
denied a new trial.

To Native people, the case of Peltier is one more ordeal in a litany
of wrongdoings committed by the U.S. government against us. While the
media in New England present images of the "Pequot miracle" in
Connecticut, the vast majority of Native people continue to live in
the most abysmal poverty.

Can we give thanks for the fact that, on many reservations,
unemployment rates surpass 50 percent? Our life expectancies are much
lower, our infant mortality and teen suicide rates much higher than
those of white Americans. Racist stereotypes of Native people, such as
those perpetuated by the Cleveland Indians, the Atlanta Braves and
countless local and national sports teams, persist. Every single one
of the more than 350 treaties that Native nations signed has been
broken by the U.S. government. The bipartisan budget cuts have
severely reduced educational opportunities for Native youth and the
development of new housing on reservations, and have caused cause
deadly cutbacks in healthcare and other necessary services.

Are we to give thanks for being treated as unwelcome in our own country?

When the descendants of the Aztec, Maya and Inca flee to the U.S., the
descendants of the wash-ashore pilgrims term them "illegal aliens" and
hunt them down.

We object to the "Pilgrim Progress" parade and to what goes on in
Plymouth because they are making millions of tourist dollars every
year from the false pilgrim mythology. That money is being made off
the backs of our slaughtered Indigenous ancestors.

Increasing numbers of people are seeking alternatives to such holidays
as Columbus Day and Thanksgiving. They are coming to the conclusion
that if we are ever to achieve some sense of community, we must first
face the truth about the history of this country and the toll that
history has taken on the lives of millions of Indigenous, Black,
Latin@, Asian, and poor and working-class white people.

The myth of Thanksgiving, served up with dollops of European
superiority and manifest destiny, just does not work for many people
in this country. As Malcolm X once said about the African-American
experience in America, "We did not land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth
Rock landed on us." Exactly.