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But you already knew that.

Thanksgiving might be the most intuitive holiday, the least strange, the least alienating. A non-ecumenical holiday, all are welcome; though it isn’t not religious, there is no religious content to disagree with, or be excluded by; if Thanksgiving were to intersect with another holiday—say, a Jewish Holiday like Hanukkah—it will consume it, gladly, absorbing potato pancakes into its bloodstream as easily as it absorbs everything else. There is really not any ritual content at all to Thanksgiving, in fact, which is precisely what makes it so unstoppable: you eat turkey (or don’t), but not for any particular reason. You can watch the football if you want, but not doing so wouldn’t even signify as a lack; there are parades, but there don’t have to be. There’s a story about the first Thanksgiving, which most people ignore. Basically, it’s just families and friends getting together and eating a meal, which is about the most transparent, empty un-ritualistic ritual there could be.

Thanksgiving is therefore the most ideological holiday. There is no “war on Thanksgiving,” not really, but not because the holiday has no ideological content—to be asserted, attacked, and defended—but rather because the ideology is buried so deeply, so firmly, as not to signify as such. It is so established, so settled, so natural, that it doesn’t need to speak itself; you can totally ignore it, and it lives on, undisturbed. Who could object to a family getting together to break bread? Who could possibly find fault with a ritual of togetherness sealed by food, or by the humble expression of gratitude for all that we might thank the universe for providing? I mean, yeah, that pilgrim stuff. But that’s not what it means to me, etc. Anyone can eat food and enjoy it; that’s the point of it.

Also, obviously, the holiday is a racist and nationalist celebration of American manifest destiny, an expression of gratitude for God’s gift of “America” to the (white) people who arrived and took it by force from the (non-white) people who were living there. There are always debunkers, who point out that the original Thanksgiving never really took place—and they’re partly right, in that the “first thanksgiving” narrative is total bullshit—but the truly damning thing about the holiday is that it actually does go all the way back to John Winthrop’s corn-stealing and grave-robbing shenanigans in 1624 (albeit by way of a protracted editorial campaign by Sarah Josepha Hale, of Godey’s Lady’s Book and Abraham Lincoln’s canny deployment of this nationalist myth in the middle of the civil war). It was in the 19th century that the ritual practice took shape, and the holiday was created, but the events which it sanctifies not only symbolically happened, but they kind of actually really happened. The darker and more grisly version of the story—as David Murray tells it in Indian Giving: Economies of Power in Indian-white Exchanges—is of starving and traumatized Englishmen wandering through a unsettled and uncanny ghostly landscape, digging up graves for food: some of the objects they grave-robbed, they put back—realizing that it would be an abomination to keep them—and others they ate, though they pledged they would make some kind of recompense to the Indians if they could ever find any living ones. They didn’t, of course. In the end, they decided that that it wasn’t to the Indians that they owed their salvation: it was to God they gave their thanks for the Indian death they had found.

But this history doesn’t really matter. I mean, obviously, the beginning of white settlement was the beginning of the end of native sovereignty. And just as obviously, when we celebrate the success of the “pilgrims” at eating native foods—turkey, yams, corn, etc—we are celebrating the beginning of a genocidal holocaust, our ability to “eat” this land, which meant that they were to be deprived of it. But the power of it is both that we make ourselves as a “we” by positioning ourselves within that story, and also that we don’t even have to. It’s already done. We even make jokes about it, a genocide which is a constant and painless source of amusement in the many comics and cartoons which observe that maybe Thanksgiving didn’t work out real well for the Indians (HAHA).

The genius of Thanksgiving is that it’s not only a specificallyAmerican holiday, and not only a ritual making of American-ness, but even we cynics who see through the bullshit, are no less American for doing so. For this reason, Sarah Josepha Hale’s editorials make interesting reading (albeit repetitive), because she is quite clear on her intention to make it a second Independence Day. While the Fourth of July commemorates American independence from Great Britain—on the field of battle and print culture, with the publication of the Declaration of Independence—her vision of a national Thanksgiving is an interestingly feminine counterpart to these masculine expressions of national patriotism, a national unity produced and consecrated through hearth and home, domestic plenty and consumption, and the bonds of love. In a turn of expression that will gladden the hearts of people who have read Imagined Communities, it is particularly important to her that every state (and Americans overseas) celebrate the holiday simultaneously, and know that they are, such that “From the St. Johns to the Rio Grande, from the Atlantic to the Pacific border, the telegraph of human happiness would move every heart to gladness simultaneously, and to render thanks to God for the blessings showered on our beloved country.” The medium is the message; the form is the content.

If the Fourth of July celebrates the moment in which “we” Americans stopped being British—the patricidal violence by which the United States broke away—Hale and Lincoln created a second ritual commemoration of American-making, the union of many different domestic states into a single Federal nation, all eating together in imagined simultaneity: “though the members of the same family might be too far separated to meet around one festive board, they would have the gratification of knowing that all were enjoying the feast.” In this sense, if the Eagle is the national symbol for a masculine Fourth of July, enshrining the Turkey in a feminized Thanksgiving would make it a different kind of national bird, but no less important: if the Eagle is the violence by which we stopped being British, the Turkey is the love by which “we” become a singular “we,” the love of a bird that we kill and eat, who makes the “ultimate sacrifice.”William Jefferson Clinton,1999: “Before I feast on one of the 45 million turkeys who will make the ultimate sacrifice, let me give this one a permanent reprieve”

The violence of it, then, is that it isn’t violent, in part because the victim gives its death willingly. But we also just don’t know, or care. As a celebration of the first hearth, the first ritual communion of togetherness—the first moment in which “we” were a “we” together—it establishes “white settlement” as the moment when we became a we, the first moment of Americans, and not only erases the previous “Americans”—and the fact that the word “American” meant “those savage red people” until it stopped meaning that, and started meaning the “we” which meant “not them”—but it lays claim to an origin story that, because it is the original, the first, wipes the slate clean of everything else that came before. If Plymouth Rock is the beginning, then the thing which was begun requires the absence of anything that preceded it, which is not only forgotten, but as it is eliminated, disappears even as the thing requiring the work of erasing.

I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. In the same way that the fiction of “Santa Claus” is actually a fiction to adults—which is to say, we need the children to think it’s real so thatwe can know that it’s not, thereby establishing the difference between adults and children—the fiction of “the first Thanksgiving” is not even surface-deep. Of course it’s bullshit. That some people believe it, or pretend to—children, grandparents, the television, right-wing culture warriors—is necessary to the establishment of the story as bullshit, as a story whose truth is literally irrelevant. But no one cares, and even they only pretend to. This is, in fact, Harry Frankfurt’s definition of bullshit, which he gives in his scholarly monograph, On Bullshit; the essence of bullshit, he writes, is “lack of connection to a concern with truth…indifference to how things really are.” In fact, when Frankfurt goes on at some length about the bullshit/humbug that is the Fourth of July, he could be talking about Thanksgiving:

Consider a Fourth of July orator, who goes on bombastically about “our great and blessed country, whose Founding-Fathers under divine guidance created a new beginning for mankind.” This is surely humbug…the orator is not lying. He would be lying only if it were his intention to bring about in his audience beliefs which he himself regards as false, concerning such matters as whether our country is great, whether it is blessed, whether the Founders had divine guidance, and whether what they did was in fact to create a new beginning for mankind. But the orator does not really care what his audience thinks about the Founding Fathers, or about the role of the deity in our country’s history, or the like. At least, it is not an interest in what anyone thinks about these matters that motivates his speech. It is clear that what makes Fourth of July oration humbug is not fundamentally that the speaker regards his statements as false. Rather…the orator intends these statements to convey a certain impression of himself. He is not trying to deceive anyone concerning American history. What he cares about is what people think of him. He wants them to think of him as a patriot, as someone who has deep thoughts and feelings about the origins and the mission of our country, who appreciates the importance of religion, who is sensitive to the greatness of our history, whose pride in that history is combined with humility before God, and so on…it is short of lying and [yet] those who perpetrate it misrepresent themselves in a certain way.

Ideology is another word for bullshit. It’s wrong, or not wrong, but who cares? It literally does not matter what you say, because it’s what you do, the structure of your actions, that retroactively determines the structures of what it is you need to believe. And because it’s true for you—and because you are true as you through it—it doesn’t matter what “really” happened, and who is to say anyway? And no one is really asking, anyway, because the answers don’t matter. We who aren’t descendants of the original people who died so we could live as Americans, we eat the fruits of that conquest every day and it makes us who we are. It doesn’t matter if we want to, or choose to, or like it, or don’t. We still live in houses built on graves, and we rob them again every day. It’s bullshit to pretend we don’t, whether by forgetting it happened, or by remembering; bullshit doesn’t stink any less when we call it “untrue.”

WITHIN TWO YEARS, MOST OF THE PROUD

WAMPANOAG INDIANS WERE MASSACRED

A NATION THAT INCLUDED MORE THAN 30,000 PEOPLE

WITH HIGHLY-ORGANIZED GOVERNMENTS AND SOCIAL STRUCTURES,

BECAME A SHABBY BAND OF NO MORE THAN

2,000 INDIANS AT THE END OF THE WAR

This is the time of the year when we are inundated with propaganda about the U.S. holiday, Thanksgiving.

Recently, the History Channel showed its rendition. The same old story: weary Pilgrims were taught how to plant crops in the new land of America by some savvy Native Americans. Then, to thank the Indians and God, the Pilgrims held a celebration in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Everybody had a great time.

This was brotherhood among human beings at its best. Then, the documentary went forward in time to the 18th century. What happened between 1621 and 1675 was completely ignored. Most U.S. history books rarely mention the fate of the Indians who helped the Pilgrims survive.

Growing up in the U.S., I was told that we should be thankful and Thanksgiving is the time for this. School teacher-after-school teacher told their students to "thank God" for what they had.

There was never any thought or consideration whether the students did not believe in God. God was always present and had to be thanked once a year.

In the sixth grade, I had the audacity to ask the teacher, "What about poor people? Should they be thankful?"

I got my cul reamed for making such a flippant inquiry. "Poor people especially have to be thankful," I was told. "God works in mysterious ways." I did not have the nerve to tell her I did not believe in God.

In my 12 years of schooling in Rhode Island and Fall River, Massachusetts, I was taught nothing about Native American culture of the area, except at Thanksgiving.

In grammar school, it was obligatory for students to create a drawing with Crayola crayons that depicted the first Thanksgiving: some weary, but benevolent white settlers mingling with Native Americans over a feast. The Indians always looked savage and the whites so civilized.

We also were told that turkey was the main fare for the feast, but again we were told another lie. Fish and small fowl, along with native vegetables, some of which the Pilgrims were unaware, adorned the menu.

The Wampanoag Indians, under Chief Massasoit, welcomed the Pilgrims to Massachusetts and provided food for what we now call the first Thanksgiving. The goodwill between the two peoples lasted only a short time, however.

Eventually, Metacomet (Anglicized name, Philip), Massasoit’s son, became chief after his father’s death.

During the time of the new regime, the Puritans were launching a land-grab from the Indians and were hostile toward the Natives, who had benevolently given them the rights to thousands of acres of land while asking for nothing in return.

When Metacomet called "foul," the Puritans upped the ante. He approached the governing authorities of the Puritans and complained that they were encroaching on Indian land and stealing their crops.

When a court met, it was run by three Puritain judges who negated the complaints of Metacomet and then ordered the Indians to be disarmed. That was the last straw for the Indian leader.

Over the next few years, tensions rose with Indians and Puritans alike being killed in raids. The more the Puritans encroached, the more the Indians resisted.

In 1675, all-out war began. The name given to the war was King Philip’s War. Maybe it should have been the Puritan War, but history has been unkind to the Natives.

In the beginning, Metacomet’s forces were dominating. At one time, the Puritans were pushed back and were discussing going back to England. But, the Natives began running out of food. Their demise was at hand.

Within two years, most of the proud Wampanoag Indians were massacred. A nation that included more than 30,000 people with highly-organized governments and social structures, became a shabby band of no more than 2,000 Indians at the end of the war.

They were ordered into slavery. Until this day, they have never recovered. The descendants of the Wampanoags of the 17th century live today in southeastern Massachusetts and most live in poverty.

Metacomet was killed by the Puritans who paid an Indian informant to spy on him and report his location. His body parts were put on public display throughout the region.

Within six decades of landing at Plymouth Rock, the whites had forever destroyed a culture that had inhabited the area for thousands of years prior to the arrival of the Mayflower.

The legacy of Metacomet should be that of America’s first resistance hero. However, few Native Americans have been given credit in U.S. history for acts of bravery, so he is still listed in our history books as a belligerent Indian who began a war against the civilized Anglos. According to white history, he was the perpetrator of the war, not the victim.

In 1675, the Boston Indian Imprisonment Act was established. It ordered the arrest of any Indian entering the city. To this day, the law is still on the books.

A tribal leader of the Kumeyaay Nation of southern California once told me that the two most sorrowful days of the year for Native Americans are Columbus Day and Thanksgiving.

He could not understand why U.S. citizens in this day and age still celebrate the two days of Native American catastrophe with all the knowledge that has been forthcoming in the past few decades about the Native American holocaust.

There is some enlightenment, but still not enough. On October 12 each year, dozens of anti-Columbus Day protests are now being held in U.S. cities.

Ironically, in conservative San Diego, the anti-Columbus Day protest draws more people than the official Columbus Day parade in the downtown area. I attribute this to the numbers of Kumeyaay Indians living in San Diego County.

I think the U.S. should follow the lead of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. A few years ago, he decommissioned Columbus Day in his country and today, on the same date, the official holiday of Indian Liberation Day is celebrated.

Here is another note of irony. Each year, at Plymouth, a mock Thanksgiving feast is held for the public to view. The clothing and the food are meant to be identical to those of the original Thanksgiving.

The script for this year’s event had to be re-written. Members of the Wampanoag tribe, who normally participate, decided to boycott this year’s show. They have had enough.

The most sacred document wherein the U.S. celebrates its Fourth of July holiday, the Declaration of Independence, is known for having some of the most revolutionary words in history in regards to the equality of men who at the time had been forever accustomed to having caste-like systems whether it be Empires, noblemen and serfs, or a monarchy rule the American colonialists lived under.

After a brief introduction, the Declaration of Independence states in the eloquent prose of the Thomas Jefferson,“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Powerful words, indeed, and ones we should hold dear no matter where we are from or live. But if one reads through the document completely – as it’s done annually and publicly in countless U.S. locations – it lists “repeated injuries and usurpations” and “tyranny” acts against the colonialists on behalf of King George III of Great Britain.The second paragraph concludes, “To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world,” before a list of 27 sentences listing various trangressions from tax complaints to forced military conscription.

The last of these complaints, however, is one that reads: He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

Pause right there. Does the most famous document in American history really state “all Men are created equal,” then hypocritically proclaim right afterward its first inhabitants are “merciless Indian savages”?

Yes, it really does, and this founding document was more than just a document written in the context of a bitter conflict. Consider, although Jefferson is most credited for penning this famous document, it was written by a committee of 5 people – including Benjamin Franklin and John Adams – and ratified 86 times by the Continental Congress before becoming official and signed. So this was a carefully mulled over phrase in that Natives would forever be considered “savages” in regards to their future relations with the U.S.

Go figure, in Jefferson’s rough draft was a statement he was adamant in having “against King George III for creating and sustaining the slave trade, describing it as ‘a cruel war against human nature.’” He was eventually overruled.

So undoubtedly, the future of Natives and their potential role in the U.S. was discussed at length, and the sentiments of them being “Indian savages” not equal with Americans would immediately be put to use in the war’s aftermath. Tribes that had fought with the British were naturally assumed as having forfeited all rights of the newly formed country, but even those allied with the U.S. would ultimately receive the same fate in spite of their loyalty.

The Stockbridge Natives of Massachusetts and other New England tribes like the Oneida spoke the same language of rights and freedom as the colonialists on the onset of the war and bled the same red blood for the cause. Stockbridge Sachem (Chief) Solomon Unhaunawwaunnett said, “If we are conquered our Lands go with yours, but if we are victorious we hope you will offer us our just Rights.”

All eastern tribes were leery of being caught in the middle of another white man’s war after the horrific atrocities committed during the French and Indian War (1754-1763) that had concluded just a dozen years prior to the onset of Revolutionary War. But they knew this war would affect them again nonetheless, and placed loyalties based on which side they thought would be fairest and able to garner them the most lands lost back.

In spite of most New England area tribes’ sincerest efforts to aid Americans, “Indian patriotism did not earn Indian people a place in the nation they helped create,” writes British American and Dartmouth Professor Colin G. Calloway in his book, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities. “For Native Americans, it seemed the American Revolution was truly a no-win situation.”

He continued, “…The Stockbridge and their Oneida friends who had adopted the patriot cause found that republican blessings were reserved for white Americans.”

Before and after the war most Stockbridge Natives sincerely tried to adopt the white man’s ways—including adopting Christianity. They were allowed to be assemblymen in their namesake Stockbridge town, but as soon as the war concluded the representative Stockbridge Native “selectmen” numbers declined rapidly until whites took over all aspects of the land and government. Most of the Stockbridge Natives were finally forced out to Wisconsin – along with many Oneida – in 1822.

Thereafter in 1824 all Natives were to be considered wards of the state under the U.S.’s newly formed BIA operating under the Department of War. And war would continue to be as even peaceful tribes like the Cherokee who also adopted the white ways would be forcibly removed from their homelands, while others were simply eradicated under the cloud of the U.S.’s Manifest Destiny mindstate.

The Oneida Indian Nation in New York was the first proclaimed ally of the U.S., fighting in various pivotal battles while selflessly providing corn to George Washington’s starving troops at Valley Forge. Current Oneida Nation Representative Ray Halbritter (whose tribe also owns www.ictmn.com) has actively been involved in the fight for garnering respect for his and other tribes via getting rid of the Washington Redskins mascot that’s deemed a racial epithet.

It’s tough to take the opinions of those deemed a lesser “merciless Indian savage” serious, apparently—much less honor their treaty rights. When the brutal history and unfair treatment of Natives is brought up in the Redskins controversy, it seemingly elevates patronizing attitudes toward American Indians’ arguments. “Just get over it,” is a dismissive phrase frequently said. But how can American Indians simply “get over it” when the primary founding document of the U.S. still condescendingly refers to them as a “savage” to this day?

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