MB Civic

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Nov2006/munro1106.html

Quiddity 

Thanksgiving
A National Day of Mourning for Indians 

By Moonanum James and Mahtowin Munro <>

Every year since 1970, United American
Indians of New England has organized the
National Day of Mourning in Plymouth at
noon on Thanksgiving Day. Hundreds of
Native people and supporters from all four
directions join in.

Every year, Native people from throughout
the Americas speak the truth about our
history and the current issues and
struggles we are involved in.

Thanksgiving in this country- and in
particular in Plymouth-is much more than
a harvest home festival. It is a celebration
of the 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 seeking
religious freedom; they already had that in
Holland. They came 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 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. In doing
this, 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
people from the Massachusetts Bay Colony
who had gone to Mystic, Connecticut 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 their lands, and
never-ending repression. They were
treated either as quaint relics from the
past or 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.” But we
came from right here, our roots are here.
They do not extend across any ocean.

The National Day of Mourning began in
1970 when Wamsutta Frank James, a
Wampanoag, was asked to speak at a state
dinner celebrating the 350th anniversary of
the pilgrim landing. He refused to speak in
praise of the white man for bringing
civilization to the poor heathens. Native
people from throughout the Americas
came to Plymouth that year 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 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.
Bipartisan budget cuts have severely
reduced educational opportunities for
Native youth and the development of new
housing on reservations, and have caused
deadly cutbacks in health-care and other
necessary services. Are we to give thanks
for being treated as unwelcome in our own
country?

Perhaps we are expected to give thanks for
the war that is being waged by the
Mexican government against indigenous
peoples there, with the military aid of the
U.S. in the form of helicopters and other
equipment? 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’s 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 Thanksgiving (and such
holidays as Columbus Day). 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, Latino, 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.
  _____ 

Mahtowin Munro (Lakota) and Moonanum
James (Wampanoag) are coleaders of
United American Indians of New England
www.home.earthlink.net/~uainendom