Posted on 11/24/2005 9:15:16 PM PST by weegee
The bitter truth, as we feast on the bounty of the empire -Our myth of Thanksgiving warps a history of genocide
ONE indication of moral and intellectual progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day with a National Day of Atonement.
Indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas. But the thought of changing this white-supremacist holiday is hard to imagine, which speaks volumes about our historical hypocrisy and its relation to the contemporary politics of empire.
It's not news that all the world's great powers achieved "greatness" through brutality on a grand scale. That those same societies are hesitant to highlight this barbarism also is predictable.
In the United States, this reluctance to acknowledge our original sin — the genocide of indigenous people — is of special importance today. It's now routine — even among conservative commentators — to describe the United States as an empire, so long as everyone understands we are an inherently benevolent one. Because history contradicts that claim, history must be twisted and tortured.
One vehicle for taming history is patriotic holidays, with Thanksgiving at the heart of U.S. myth-building. We hear a story about the hearty Pilgrims, whose search for freedom took them from England to Massachusetts. There, aided by the friendly Wampanoag Indians, they survived in a harsh environment, leading to a harvest feast in 1621 after the Pilgrims' first winter.
Some aspects of the conventional story are true enough. But it's also true that by 1637 Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop was proclaiming a thanksgiving for the successful massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children, part of the long and bloody process of opening land for the English invaders. The pattern would repeat itself across the continent until between 95 percent and 99 percent of American Indians had been exterminated.
Simply put:
Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was blessed by those we hold up as our heroic Founding Fathers.
In 1783 George Washington said he preferred buying Indians' land rather than driving them off it because that was like driving "wild beasts" from the forest. He compared Indians to wolves, "both being beasts of prey, tho' they differ in shape." Thomas Jefferson — president No. 3 and author of the Declaration of Independence, which refers to Indians as the "merciless Indian Savages" — was known to romanticize Indians and their culture, but that didn't stop him in 1807 from writing to his secretary of war that in a coming conflict with certain tribes, "[W]e shall destroy all of them."
As the genocide was winding down in the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt (president No. 26) defended whites' expansion across the continent as an inevitable process "due solely to the power of the mighty civilized races which have not lost the fighting instinct, and which by their expansion are gradually bringing peace into the red wastes where the barbarian peoples of the world hold sway."
How does a country deal with the fact that some of its most revered historical figures held these views? Here's how "respectable" politicians, pundits and professors play the game:
When invoking a grand and glorious aspect of our past, then history is all-important. We are told how crucial it is for people to know history, and there is much hand-wringing about the younger generations' lack of knowledge about, and respect for, that history. But when one brings up facts and interpretations that contest the celebratory story and make people uncomfortable, suddenly the value of history drops precipitously and one is asked, "Why do you insist on dwelling on the past?"
This off-and-on engagement with history isn't of mere academic interest; as the dominant world power of the moment, U.S. elites have a clear stake in the contemporary propaganda value of that history. Obscuring bitter truths about historical crimes helps perpetuate the fantasy of U.S. benevolence, making it easier to sell contemporary imperial adventures — such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq — as another benevolent action.
History can be one of the many ways we create and impose hierarchy, or it can be part of a process of liberation. The truth won't set us free, but the telling of truth at least opens the possibility of freedom.
As Americans sit down on Thanksgiving Day to gorge themselves on the bounty of empire, many will worry about the expansive effects of overeating on their waistlines. We would be better to think about the constricting effects on the day's mythology on our minds.
Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of "The Heart of Whiteness: Race, Racism, and White Privilege and Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity." He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
This guy should really just lock himself in a room and "do the right thing".
One need only ask these questions.
Where was "native American" society headed, when the European's came here.
What was its level of "living"? Subsistance.
What was its organization? Tribal, chiefdoms.
What was its inter-tribal associations? Constant territorial conflicts.
What was the status of slavery? Practiced by most tribes with slaves seen as legitimate bounty from a succesful raid on another tribe.
What was the standards of education? Oral, and life experience; no written language with any tribe.
What was the standards of trade and industry? Raw materials, craftwork from animal skins and plants, no industrial or pre-industrial level of tools or tool use for "maufactures".
In other words, particularyly with no written language, the meeting of the Europeans with most native American tribes was never possible to be "favorable" to the tribes, because they lacked most anything with which to advance, other than acquiring the advancements that the Europeans brought; in other words, by assimilating with the Europeans.
This guilt ridden Mr. Jensen seems to not realize that all human progress - whether in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America or Africa - throughout all time has included the gradual increase of successful populations and the assimilation of other populations. In fact, most any Ethnic group in Europe or Asia today can not claim to be the "original" inhabitants of the area they appear to be a majority in today, with only a few exceptions.
This guilt ridden Mr. Jensen attempts to place modern sensibilities on a situation where he pretends that such sensibilities were active in the "native" populations and not active in the European populations - noble, caring, peaceful, etc., etc., etc. Mr. Jensen ignores that the entire world in the past, among all peoples, including "native" Americans, did not have the sensibilities with which he judges the Europeans of the 16 and 17 hundreds.
His biggest slime against Europeans, just like that professor Ward Churchill, has to do with the actual and extensive reduction in "native" populations due to disease, diseases that the Europeans brought with them, diseases the Europeans had much better immune defenses for and the "native" Americans did not. The diseases and the immunities came from the European periods of massive plaugues, which had not taken place in north or south America. And yes, a very many "native" Americans caught ill from simple contact with Europeans and died. Part of that truth though is the fact that the majority of those deaths accured early, spread quickly and spread far and had done most of the genocidal level of damage before major colonization began.
Just think of how fast they predict that the "bird flu" could spread today if they cannot produce antidoets for it.
The slime part is that the revisionist history of this aspect is written as if some secret cabal in Europe sought to intentionally eliminate the "natives" here by intentionally bringing European diseases here. It completely ignores the level of understanding about diseases in general and the total lack of understanding, at the time, about how one could have or not have immunities to disease. It happened, but no one sought to make it happen, no one brought disease to north America as a weapon.
That's right. You hate this evil country so much, GTFO. Otherwise, STFU. Or we'll KYFA.
What a surprise.
I had 4 ancestors on the Mayflower. They were faced with with no chance of improving the economics of their lives.
They took a chance and came to America. They didn't just change their lives, they changed the world! I honor their memory today. They were not invaders and had no intentions of harming anyone. The "professor" of this article is not worthy of being in this country. He is free to go to any country of his choice. He should be aware that he would quickly find no freedom to express complaints there.
GOD BLESS AMERICA
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. Why do you ask?? It's because after my family is done eating, we all go out, as a family, and hunt down some Injuns. Bagged a few of 'em yesterday I did!!!
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!
have you noticed none of these leftist freaks want to do anything on a date already that has not already become traditional
That was my thought, too. My advice would be for him to give the deed to his house to the first indian he can find and to return to Europe forthwith...
The Europeans(and others)who came here acquired the land from the natives fair and square under the existing land transfer rules in place at the time, namely, conquest.
Conquest was how the Mohigans took land from the Pequots in my neck of the woods and it was how all tribes took land from each other during the centuries that they held sway here.
After having the continent for 20,000 years and working it all the way up to the neolithic, they lost it to a group that, 400 years later, left footprints on the moon. The principle at work is called highest and best use.
The writer is a confirmed, ideological leftist, without doubt. Why then can we not likewise affix all the guilt of the most dehumanizing, most genocidal, most oppressive regimes the world has ever seen, because this man seeks refuge in their shadow? Why isn't this writer guilty of all the crimes of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Castro? Perhaps, like a true acolyte of Walter Duranty, he has also rewritten the history of those blood soaked regimes, so that he can avoid acquiring their guilt?
Wait, the peaceful Illini Indian tribe was wiped out by other peaceful Native American tribes? Never mind.
Hope you had a happy Thanksgiving.
"Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was blessed by those we hold up as our heroic Founding Fathers."
Hmmmm. Not according to President Lincoln. I read this before dinner yesterday. Everyone loved it, except the lone socialist in our midst, LOL!
Proclamation Establishing Thanksgiving Day
October 3, 1863
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.
A. Lincoln
Same idea being pushed by Ward (call me Big Chief) Churchill.
More rebuttal:
"It was this story of Captain John Mason leading his small force of Puritans and their Mohegan and Narragansett allies on a two-day overland march to catch the Pequots by surprise in their fortified village onthe Mystic River, which was surrounded and set ablaze killing all inside, that historian/artist, David Wagner, was commissioned to paint by the Mashantucket Pequot elders in the late 1990's. Studying all of the early accounts and walking the ground to conceptualize the events as they happened, he came to realize that they could not have happened as the Puritan "heroes" claimed. In fact he became more and more convinced that the "massacre" never happened. That it was a story made up to cover up a military fiasco."
http://www.weyanoke.org/tbw-PequotMassacre.html
BUMP
They mean to take it down from within (not to change the system but to overthrow it altogether).
They know that their socialist eutopias do not really exist. So instead he leeches off the same government he condemns for hundreds of years of wrongs. You do know that he teaches at a taxpayer supported PUBLIC school.
Again I will cite survival of the fittest. We built up immunity to that which could kill us. US as humans. Not us as different nationalities.
Somehow Darwin evolution theory is good but health science is bad.
To a socialist, "all property is theft".
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