Thanksgiving: A National Day of Mourning for Indians

http://home.earthlink.net/~uainendom/

Thanksgiving: A National Day of Mourning for Indians

by Moonanum James and Mahtowin Munro

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 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 truth is a sharp contrast to that mythology.

..read on.. http://home.earthlink.net/~uainendom/
(scroll down page to link)

from what the Puritans did back in the 1600s in Plymouth and Massachusettes Bay Colonies. As one who has done genealogical research for years, I have come across obscure documents and town histories that are less than flattering to the European settlers. When one realizes that the Pilgrims got mad at Massasoit's son, and captured him, decapitated him and stuck his head on a pike on the walls of Plymouth fort, one wonders if we've come anywhere at all in the last 400 years. And the idea that Christian/European culture was superior and justified the destruction of entire societies also seems to have echoes in the modern Bush doctrine, if one substitues "American" for "European".

An interesting side note: some Pilgrims defected to the Native American side, and lived with them. Too bad there weren't enough of them to make a difference.

History Repeats itself:
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.

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

I wonder why the media don't cover this national day of mourning?

solidarity with the tribes.

thanksgiving brainwashing includes the Puritans. you know, the religiously insane men who murdered women who they thought were witches.........

The Thanksgiving myth needs to be outed and done away with.

So does the myth that Russia or China were ever Communist. They were dictatorships, totalitarian or fascist, I'm not sure which or if they were some combination of these. It seems to me, and I may be wrong and I sure someone will straighten me out if I am, that Israel is the closest the world has seen to communism.

I heard a rumor that someone was trying to say that women got the vote because the white male politicians were rewarding them for their service as Rosie the Riveter. Has anyone heard this BS - it doesn't even fit the time line but we know what happens when a lie is repeated often enough.

Since I wasn't born yet.