A number of public school districts across the country are encouraging students and staff to “rethink” the Thanksgiving holiday because of the colonial oppression of Native Americans by English settlers.
Several school districts in multiple states are providing teachers and students with resources that criticize Thanksgiving as a colonial holiday and claim the day known for roast turkey, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie is a reminder to Native Americans of genocide inflicted by English settlers.
The Los Angeles Unified School District’s Office of Human Relations, Diversity, and Equity provided educators with a PowerPoint presentation titled “Let’s talk about Thanksgiving,” which claimed to separate fact from fiction about the narratives surrounding the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
One slide says, contrary to popular belief, the history of the Native Americans in Plymouth did not begin when the Mayflower landed there in 1621 and the Pilgrim settlers aboard befriended them. Rather, the slide says the natives of the Plymouth area had been in contact with Europeans for a hundred years and that British slavers had brought smallpox to the population, killing 90%.
Another slide says the narrative around the first Thanksgiving being a celebration of unity between English and Native Americans is untrue.
“Researchers doubt that there was a celebration or unity between the Indigenous Peoples and the European settlers,” the slide says. “European settlers continually pushed the Indigenous Peoples off their land and made them conform to European customs.”
The Los Angeles school district also offered another slideshow about the “National Day of Mourning,” which is how some Native Americans commemorate Thanksgiving.
<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1669061363276,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"00000180-f1c2-d76b-a9ef-ffc678330000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1669061363276,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"00000180-f1c2-d76b-a9ef-ffc678330000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_68722188", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1188146"} }); ","_id":"00000184-9bcf-d5ff-a7af-9fdf38190000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video Embed”Every Thanksgiving day in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Indigenous Americans gather to observe a National Day of Mourning,” one of the slides says. “National Day of Mourning began in 1970 as a way for Indigenous people to remember their ancestors and grieve their genocide.”
The National Day of Mourning was also mentioned in a holiday calendar shared on Twitter by the Willow Grove, Pennsylvania-based Thomas Fitzwater Elementary School.
“Thanksgiving, commemorating the Pilgrims’ harvest feast, and sometimes marked as a day of mourning to recognize the decimation of the Native Americans by the colonists,” the calendar says.
https://twitter.com/ThomasFitzwater/status/1587233656598315010?s=20&t=sOujoW6YkcAy_YuHeRfzKQIn the Iowa City Community School District, a monthly newsletter from the office of diversity said while “Thanksgiving for some is a time of celebration, we must not forget that for many Native American and Indigenous individuals in our community, it is often a time of mourning or reflection on past generational trauma.”
The newsletter provided links to several articles about how to view Thanksgiving through the lens of Native Americans, including “A Racial Justice Guide to Thanksgiving” from the Center for Racial Justice.
“We urge everyone to take time during the fall break to learn more about Native American and Indigenous stories and history,” the newsletter says.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Erika Sanzi, the director of outreach for the parent activist group Parents Defending Education, told the Washington Examiner that efforts to malign the history of Thanksgiving have been in the works for years, noting that her own child was confronted with it in fifth grade.
“Is there a place for comprehensive lessons about the history of the day? Sure,” Sanzi said. “But when 10-year-olds suddenly don’t want to celebrate because their teacher tells them it’s a celebration of murder? That’s educational malpractice, not to mention historical ignorance.”
