my bestie calls today pie day. it is her official start to making holiday food, which she loves to do and noone complains bc it’s food and good and usually gooey and sweet. she is comanche. for some of you who don’t know, that is a nation of indigenous ppls who lived in the north american continent freely, and then were along with the kiowas, apache, and cherokee systematically placed in the southern midwest region of the united states. then when white ppl wanted to move to this area-they really didn’t want to move here they just ran outta money or energy on their voyage west to the promise land of gold, and couldn’t afford to leave-those damn indians were in the way, so we again gathered the tribes and gave them the most inhospitable land that grows nothing! o don’t worry, we took that back too. families were torn apart, taking the children to boarding schools to indoctrinate them into white culture. every possible theory on the complete annihilation of indigenous ppls were used against the native americans. there has been the usually big push to not celebrate thanksgiving due to the slated history of the pilgrims and natives. for anyone who has read a book or talked to a native person, you pretty much know that the whole invitation to celebration love and compassion those pilgrims showed was bullshit. so there are a whole bunch of left leaning ppl who will not celebrate thanksgiving otherwise known to some as “slaughter day” “genocide day” so on and so on.
well, let’s put this in some kind of historical perspective since we are going off the history of pilgrims. most if not all cultures have feasts. a time of gathering for those who don’t see each other on a consistent basis to get together and eat and enjoy each other’s company. it is of no surprise to have a feast in the fall, just before the coldest part of winter. for european pagan ppls it would have been samhain, more than likely, or what we call samhain and mabon today, mid-autumn festival for those in china and primarily chinese populations, different regions of india celebrated different festivals under different names. the point is, having a feast in celebration is not a new thing that the european colonialist came up with, it has happened all over the world for centuries.
now, that being said i totally disagree with indoctrinating the population in the concept that the pilgrims were really rad fellas who loved the wampanoag ppls so much for helping them learn how to live off of the land that they had a huge feast and invited the savages to come eat with them in a show of thanks-hence the name thanksgiving. while part of this is true, after the initial get together things got pretty damned bad for the native ppls at the hands of the european colonialist. in wampanoag tradition, they were not invited to share harvest w the pilgrims. they had helped them despite earlier europeans’ actions against the nations, bringing plague and slaughter. the earlier europeans had been traders, and had not brought their families with them. when the wampanoag saw the women and children climb off the mayflower, the assumption was these were family ppl not hellbent on war. after a certain amount of time watching the pilgrims suffer from hunger and an inability to grow food, the tribe helped teach them. they had what the tribe considered “friendship”. members of the tribe heard several shots fired while the pilgrims were hunting. they thought they were in trouble and the chief and a band of warriors went to aid the pilgrims. seeing as how they were there, the pilgrims invited them to stay and eat at the harvest feast. after the first thanksgiving feast the holiday was scarred with atrocious acts of violence against the native nations. many natives see thanksgiving as a day of mourning.
for me i believe it is healthy to have an equal amount of thanks and mourning today. i don’t believe i can ever be too grateful for where i am in my life bc really i have a hell of alot to be thankful for. i will sit down with friends and family from all different walks of life and cultures and eat dinner. there will more than likely be some talk of the historical bullshit we like to blow up the asses of children making white ppl look like they were doing natives a favor by showing up. there will be laughter. there will be love. and there will be pies.
dancing madness of a feral gal 