The Thanksgiving Guide to Colonialism by Zora Grizz
Content warning: Colonialism, genocide
If you like learning about truths, I encourage you to read further.
If you like Thanksgiving, I encourage you to pause here and consider if you want to choose this particular adventure.
Isn't that nice, being given a choice?
Not like having your homeland invaded, your family murdered, and hundreds of years of atrocities committed against you by colonizers, only to be celebrated as a holiday of unity when you were not even consulted. That’s not a choice. That is genocide and oppression, which continues to this day.
You can stand here, at the beginning of the path this article is leading you down, and choose to move yourself forward. You can also choose to walk away, wondering what it was, exactly, that you didn't want to learn.
But you get the basic consideration of choice. How nice. How very un-Thanksgiving like.
All aboard? Great. Buckle up, buttercup.
Thanksgiving is an American celebration of genocide.
American culture propagates a myth: that Indigenous peoples and colonizing religious extremists became best-buddies and ate food together. And hey, let's dress our kids up like these religious zealots who committed war crimes. Let’s host school plays with children in black and white construction paper hats or orange feathers taped to headbands, a cartoonish and offensive representation of the people our ancestors slaughtered.
No. Let’s instead do a recitation of facts, shall we?
Thanksgiving, a supposed celebration of colonizer and Indigenous friendship, became an official American holiday in 1863.
However, in 1862, American government agents forced starvation upon the Dakota-Sioux peoples. When some attempted to fight back, the Dakota War of 1862 occurred, and 38 Dakota men were hanged. You can read more about this at The Citizen Potawatomi Nation website. America has literally been the focus of studies on the perpetrators of genocide for their treatment of Indigenous peoples.
Just over 20 years before that, the Cherokee people were forced by the American government onto what became known as The Trail of Tears, a forced migration that killed 25% of the Cherokee population.
Yet here we sit: looking forward to Thanksgiving Dinner like it's a warm, cozy fire.
For many Indigenous peoples in America, the federal holiday of Thanksgiving is not a celebration, but a day of deep and continued mourning for the countless Indigenous people murdered by settlers whose ancestors now occupy their traditional homelands.
But American culture, as it often does, continues to take this bizarre and grotesque caricature of a holiday even further. Thanksgiving-themed movie specials that are focused on “family values and being together”. (Ask yourself as you watch them: Whose family values? Whose traditions? Whose bones are buried deep beneath the earth under the foundations of the white suburban home featured so heavily in these holiday films? Who used to live there? Who is not even getting acknowledged as white moms wear a red checkered apron and white dads take a big knife to a giant bird? Does just looking at that apple pie make you feel sick?)
Most (all) Christianity-based holidays are celebrations that were stolen from the traditional celebrations of people Indigenous to the area before Christianity butchered its way across them. Christianity steals and twists the holidays of anyone it comes into contact with as a means of social control: control the holiday, control its meaning, control its people. This can be seen across the globe in elements of harvest festivals and fall celebrations.
So what can you do about it?
Educate yourself.
Learn about the people whose land you occupy. Learn about what you can do to support and help.
Change the way you think about, talk about, approach, and celebrate holidays.
Look into supportive measures like land-back programs.
Volunteer.
Want to celebrate life? That’s great! Make your own celebrations and traditions that are not a twisted parody strung along a bloody line of genocide and oppression.
