Thanksgiving

I’m riding on BART on the way to the airport. I am very excited because I’m going to Phoenix to celebrate Thanksgiving with my Mom and two of my three brothers. It’s been over a year since I attended a family event . Thanksgiving has always been a special day to me because usually it means spending time with family. My mother is a great cook. If she owned a restaurant I would eat there every day. She always prepares a fantastic Thanksgiving meal. As kids my brothers and I would look forward to Thanksgiving dinner and days of leftovers and cold turkey sandwiches. When I was young I could easily put away three plates of turkey, stuffing, yams, greens, mac cheese, potato salad, and of course pumpkin and sweet potato pie. As a young adult I remember taking home care packages of leftovers prepared by my mother which I would share with roommates and friends who once they tasted my Mom’s cooking were hooked for life. I’ll watch football games and have one healthy plate of food as that is all I can handle (and all I need) these days.

Too often the day goes by without really thinking about the real meaning of Thanksgiving. 400 years ago the immigrants, pilgrims, invaders, take whatever name suits you, landed on the shores of what we now call America. They were part of the many people who spread about the world to help secure the vast British empire. They were British subjects loyal to King James as Americans hadn’t been invented yet. The newcomers struggled to make a go of it. The world was alien. They didn’t know how to farm the land. They didn’t know how to hunt the game. Most of the people were dieing of starvation and disease. The Wampanoag, the indigenous people native to the land, had been watching the newcomers. They were invisible, blending in with the natural flora and fauna. They were not sure what to do. Do they help the struggling visitors or do they run them off of the land that they called home?

They decided the newcomers were not a threat. They brought women and children. Whatever they were here for it was not to wage war, or so it seemed. The Wampanoag took pity on the rapidly perishing newcomers. They came in peace and friendship and brought offerings of bountiful food to the newcomers. The Wampanoag knew they were taking a chance. From the cloak of the forest they silently watched the newcomers arrive on their large ships. What were their intentions? Would more come? Are they peaceful?

These were questions that could not yet be answered. Some of the natives wanted to wipe them out and easily they could have. But their chief Massasoit decided otherwise. He decided to come in peace and bring them food so they would survive. And so it was. They brought them food and the newcomers were saved. The newcomers were grateful and insisted they had come in peace under the protection of King James who was now the ruler of these lands, the King of all the people. The newcomers declared the day to be a holiday, a Thanksgiving. They thanked the natives but mostly they thanked their Christian god for in their eyes He was the one who saved them.

400 years later the newcomers still celebrate Thanksgiving, but not as a people struggling to survive but as the people who, in their minds, are the most powerful nation to ever exist on the planet. And what of the natives? They again have become invisible people but not by choice. For America to be what it is today somebody had to pay a price and they were the ones. They were a people who inhabited every part of the North American continent at one time and now are barely seen, almost extinct. Think about this. What is the closest indigenous population to where you live? What native people once inhabited the land where you now live? For myself I know that the Miwok tribe were the original inhabitants of what is now the San Francisco Bay Area. I have no idea what is the nearest native community to the City of San Francisco. I should find out. It is something I should know. I know the history of California when it comes to the Spanish, the Mexicans, and the Americans, but I don’t know about the natives. I know there is some native blood in my family line of my father’s side. His grandfather was one quarter Choctaw. I know about the Trail of Tears. I know about Wounded Knee. I know about the Mandans and the Lewis and Clark expedition. I know about the half breed rebel Metis. I know about the Aztecs, I know about the Incas. I know about John Horse and the Black Seminoles. I know about Geronimo and Sitting Bull. That is not a lot. I should know more. We should all know more.

This is a day when we should give thanks but it is also a day we should acknowledge the people who made America possible. We should all take some time to learn something we don’t yet know about the native people of our land. We should find out about the lesser known tribes, the ones that inhabited the areas where we now live. Their blood and bones are in the soil. Anywhere you dig deep in the soil you will find what they left behind. Find the latest native community nearest to where you live. If you can, visit them and give thanks. We read and here about their casinos whenever election time comes around. We assume they are doing ok when in fact they are the most impoverished group in the nation. My friend Craig Catimon has lived in the midst of native people for years. He has a son with a Mohawk woman of the Akwesasne tribe. He lives in Massena in upstate NY near the Canadian border not too far from the Akwesasne reservation. From what he tells me there are no jobs, there is no industry, and everybody is poor. He himself works in a cigarette factory. He struggles to make a living just as the native people do. They have problems with alcohol and depression.

In the age of the internet many Americans have traced their family lines to claim any heritage they have as indigenous people. We have taken just about everything from them now we even want to own their identity for this heritage movement has nothing at all to do with restoring the indigenous people and honoring the many treaties we have broken with them. It has everything to do with people searching for some meaningful culture in a land of materialism and consumption. We will feast today and go shopping tomorrow on Black Friday and for the next month it will all be about shopping up to the day we celebrate the birth of a Hebrew man born in the Middle East who had a philosophy of peace, love and sharing, a man who appears on to us in churches across the country nailed to a cross, a man who was Jewish and Middle Eastern but made to look like a white Anglo Saxon everywhere his image exists. It is not the truth but like so many falsehoods we accept it as true because it fit’s the image they would have us believe is the truth. We don’t question it and will even go as far to violently defend the falsehood. Try to make Him African or Asian and see what happens.

Happy Thanksgiving.