Thanksgiving is a very popular holiday celebrated in the United States. I mean, what’s not perfect about it? Surrounded by your loved ones while eating a warm, delicious meal cooked by them. Expressing your gratitude and thanks with prayers or conversations. It’s a very heartwarming holiday. I’m pretty sure a majority of us are familiar with the origins of Thanksgiving. You know, “In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue”. The common denominator in all of those stories is the focus on the European point of view. Very rarely does it discuss the Native Americans’ thought process when their homeland was invaded and disrupted by these European settlers. Let’s talk about it, shall we?
The True Man Columbus Was:
Many of us have the assumption that Columbus wasn’t a bad guy. I mean, the guy has a holiday named after him for finding our home today, America! I would label it more as an “invasive” or “conquering” than “settling”. How would you feel if a bunch of random ships just decided to settle in your land, your territory, without any permission whatsoever? We rarely discuss Columbus’ selfish thoughts he had been planning out in his head. When Columbus and his crew first arrived in the “New World”, they thought that it was India, which led to him referring to the people of America as Indians. At first, he set out on the expedition to obtain various spices, but, out of greed and selfishness, he saw the gold that adorned the Native Americans and wanted it all for himself. He then declared a new mission, what is that you may ask? Columbus began to torture these poor people for their gold. He would cut up their hands if they refused to give any to him, and he would go as far as burning down their villages in search of gold. How could a man act on such sadistic thoughts? Not to mention, Columbus was also a slave trader, and he’d force Native Americans onto his ships to be brought back as slaves to Spain. He would even kidnap young Indigenous people, the youngest being eight to ten years old, he would traffick them since their age range made “the best profits”.
How do the Indigenous people feel about Thanksgiving?
For a majority of Indigenous people, they view Thanksgiving as somewhat of a controversial holiday. Who could blame them? I would be mad if people were idolizing a day of giving when Columbus seemed to give the Native Americans nothing but trouble, pain, and suffering. They don’t view Columbus as a discoverer, they view him as a colonizer. His arrival led to an uproar of death and losses of Indigenous ways of life. So, as an alternative, they’d rather celebrate “Indigenous Peoples Day”. This provides the opportunity for educators to rethink the way they are teaching people the origins of Thanksgiving and focus more on the unspoken parts of Columbus’ actions. Indigenous Peoples Day would also provide educators of K-12 to teach the future generations that Native Americans aren’t just people of the past. If the curriculum is revised to better describe and show the past and present stories of Native people, educators would then have the ability to teach students about Native American beliefs, cultures, and traditions more effectively.
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Of course, I’m not saying that you should stop celebrating Thanksgiving as a whole. The holiday obviously holds a different meaning since it’s been passed over time. Now it’s more centered around giving and showing love and care to your loved ones. I do believe that we should be more considerate of the people who suffered from this time in history. We should show consideration and thankfulness to the Indigenous as well. After all, if nobody had already lived on American land, then there would be no Thanksgiving as we know it today. Instead of mainly talking about Columbus and his “great discovery”, I think it’s more fitting that we pay more respect and thanks to the Indigenous people.
Learn more about the origins of Thanksgiving at these links:
https://sites.uab.edu/humanrights/tag/christopher-columbus/#:~:text=The%20arrival%20of%20Christopher%20Columbus,of%20Natives%20as%20a%20result.
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-09/indigenous-peoples-day-why-its-replacing-columbus-day#:~:text=For%20many%20Indigenous%20peoples%2C%20Columbus,of%20Indigenous%20ways%20of%20life.
