How Native Americans Celebrate Thanksgiving
Most white Americans celebrate Thanksgiving yearly with good food and other activities. This day is looked upon by Native Americans differently from how white Americans look at it. While there are some Native Americans who treat Thanksgiving as a day of giving thanks, others would rather look at it as a day of mourning and remembrance.
If you want to understand why this is so, then you should look back at what really happened on the first Thanksgiving day.
In school, children are taught that when the pilgrims arrived in American it was the Native Americans that taught them how to plant food and other items in order to survive. The pilgrims and Native Americans ate a feast together in thanksgiving for the abundant harvest that was gathered from their crops.
This story, however, is not what actually happened. When most Native Americans had died of the plague, the pilgrims settled at Plymouth. Squanto, the Native American who had helped the pilgrims previously, was made into a slave. The Native Americans in the next few centuries became slaves, being killed, persecuted, and robbed by the pilgrims.
And this is why Native Americans look at the first Thanksgiving as a violent past while the white Americans look at it as a day of giving thanks.
The holiday has changed over time. Although we still hear the story of the first Thanksgiving being told, today’s celebration is all about family, food, and gratitude. If you read on here, you will learn about the traditions and history of Thanksgiving.
With the focus of today’s Thanksgiving celebration on family and food, a lot of Native Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving for them gives them a chance to continue a heritage of helping people in need. Others, though, treat this day as a remembrance of the people’s resilience and their survival from the oppression.
Schools today still teach the story of the first Thanksgiving but many anti-racist organizations are asking them to be more aware of the real history of the day. Teachers are encouraged to provide more accurate information about Native American Culture.
White people don’t have to remember the painful past. You can celebrate Thanksgiving by giving your family an idea of what the first Thanksgiving was for both pilgrims and Native Americans. The past cannot simply be ignored by Native Americans.
For the Native American, thanksgiving can be an opportunity to remember their heritage and give thanks for life, but it can also be a painful remembrance of a period of great suffering and oppression.
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