[NYTr] Thanksgiving: Native Americans Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2006 11:16:13 -0600 (CST) X-Sender-Host-Name: chumbly.math.missouri.edu X-DSPAM-Result: mail; result="Innocent"; class="Whitelisted"; probability=0.0000; confidence=1.00; signature=N/A X-Spam-Class: HAM Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit sent by Bill Koehnlein Thanksgiving and Native Americans AlterNet - January 1, 2000 http://www.alternet.org/story/4391/ Thanksgiving: A Native American View by Jacqueline Keeler [For a Native American, the story of Thanksgiving is not a very happy one. But a member of the Dineh Nation and the Yankton Dakota Sioux finds occasion for hope. An AlterNet Thanksgiving classic.] I celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving. This may surprise those people who wonder what Native Americans think of this official U.S. celebration of the survival of early arrivals in a European invasion that culminated in the death of 10 to 30 million native people. Thanksgiving to me has never been about Pilgrims. When I was six, my mother, a woman of the Dineh nation, told my sister and me not to sing "Land of the Pilgrim's pride" in "America the Beautiful." Our people, she said, had been here much longer and taken much better care of the land. We were to sing "Land of the Indian's pride" instead. I was proud to sing the new lyrics in school, but I sang softly. It was enough for me to know the difference. At six, I felt I had learned something very important. As a child of a Native American family, you are part of a very select group of survivors, and I learned that my family possessed some "inside" knowledge of what really happened when those poor, tired masses came to our homes. When the Pilgrims came to Plymouth Rock, they were poor and hungry -- half of them died within a few months from disease and hunger. When Squanto, a Wampanoag man, found them, they were in a pitiful state. He spoke English, having traveled to Europe, and took pity on them. Their English crops had failed. The native people fed them through the winter and taught them how to grow their food. These were not merely "friendly Indians." They had already experienced European slave traders raiding their villages for a hundred years or so, and they were wary -- but it was their way to give freely to those who had nothing. Among many of our peoples, showing that you can give without holding back is the way to earn respect. Among the Dakota, my father's people, they say, when asked to give, "Are we not Dakota and alive?" It was believed that by giving there would be enough for all -- the exact opposite of the system we live in now, which is based on selling, not giving. To the Pilgrims, and most English and European peoples, the Wampanoags were heathens, and of the Devil. They saw Squanto not as an equal but as an instrument of their God to help his chosen people, themselves. Since that initial sharing, Native American food has spread around the world. Nearly 70 percent of all crops grown today were originally cultivated by Native American peoples. I sometimes wonder what they ate in Europe before they met us. Spaghetti without tomatoes? Meat and potatoes without potatoes? And at the "first Thanksgiving" the Wampanoags provided most of the food -- and signed a treaty granting Pilgrims the right to the land at Plymouth, the real reason for the first Thanksgiving. What did the Europeans give in return? Within 20 years European disease and treachery had decimated the Wampanoags. Most diseases then came from animals that Europeans had domesticated. Cowpox from cows led to smallpox, one of the great killers of our people, spread through gifts of blankets used by infected Europeans. Some estimate that diseases accounted for a death toll reaching 90 percent in some Native American communities. By 1623, Mather the elder, a Pilgrim leader, was giving thanks to his God for destroying the heathen savages to make way "for a better growth," meaning his people. In stories told by the Dakota people, an evil person always keeps his or her heart in a secret place separate from the body. The hero must find that secret place and destroy the heart in order to stop the evil. I see, in the "First Thanksgiving" story, a hidden Pilgrim heart. The story of that heart is the real tale than needs to be told. What did it hold? Bigotry, hatred, greed, self-righteousness? We have seen the evil that it caused in the 350 years since. Genocide, environmental devastation, poverty, world wars, racism. Where is the hero who will destroy that heart of evil? I believe it must be each of us. Indeed, when I give thanks this Thursday and I cook my native food, I will be thinking of this hidden heart and how my ancestors survived the evil it caused. Because if we can survive, with our ability to share and to give intact, then the evil and the good will that met that Thanksgiving day in the land of the Wampanoag will have come full circle. And the healing can begin. [Jacqueline Keeler is a member of the Dineh Nation and the Yankton Dakota Sioux. Her work has appeared in Winds of Change, an American Indian journal.] *** A Teaching Perspective on Thanksgiving Understanding Prejudice Teacher's Corner http://www.understandingprejudice.org/teach/thanksgiv.htm A Letter to Parents about Thanksgiving Thanksgiving presents a special challenge to school teachers who want to discuss the holiday without resorting to biased information about Native American history and culture. To prepare parents for an anti-bias curricular approach, educators may wish to use or adapt the letter below. For additional teaching tips on Native American topics, see Teaching About Native American Issues at http://www.understandingprejudice.org/teach/native.htm Sample Letter to Parents Dear Parents: As a part of our anti-bias curriculum, we are taking a careful look at how we discuss and celebrate Thanksgiving with students. As you may know, many Native American images found on Thanksgiving cards, decorations, and school materials are very stereotypic. They are often based on a "composite" view of Native Americans rather than on accurate and diverse Native American lifestyles and traditions. As a consequence, Thanksgiving imagery serves to teach and reinforce children's misinformation and stereotypic thinking about Native Americans, laying a foundation for later prejudice. Moreover, the story of Thanksgiving is usually told from only one side -- that of the European pilgrims who came to America. Rarely is it told from the perspective of the people who were already here. As a result, the role played by Native Americans in helping the pilgrims to survive is often downplayed or ignored. To many Native Americans today, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning because it is a reminder that in return for their help, they were repaid with theft of their land and the genocide of their people. What, then, do we propose to do? We do not advocate the elimination of Thanksgiving from our curriculum. Instead, we strive to help children understand that Thanksgiving means different things to different people. We will explain that some families celebrate Thanksgiving and others do not, and we will explain why (in language appropriate for children). We will also discuss how Thanksgiving cards and decorations sometimes misrepresent Native Americans and lead them to feel hurt or offended. What we teach about Thanksgiving is part of a larger effort to help students learn accurate information about Native Americans of the past and present. Our goal is to counter misleading portrayals in children's books, television shows, and movies (e.g., Westerns), so that students do not acquire stereotypes that promote racism later in life. As part of this effort, we do not permit students to role-play cowboys and Indians (the historic enemy of Indians was not cowboys, but the U.S. government -- some of the first cowboys were actually Indians). Furthermore, we want to make sure students understand that being an Indian is not a role, but part of a person's identity. If you are not sure what your child or children think about Native Americans, this Thanksgiving may be a good time to find out. You might ask questions such as: * "What do you know about Native Americans?" * "Would you like to have a Native American friend?" * "Where do Native Americans live today?" (most live off reservations) * "Can Native Americans vote in U.S. elections?" (yes, they are citizens) For Thanksgiving, you might also consider giving a multicultural book about Native Americans or other groups. As we give thanks this season, we hope you will find ways within your family to reinforce these lessons and help instill in our children an appreciation and accurate understanding of all cultures. Sincerely, [Name] [Title] [Source Note: The letter above is adapted from pages 99-100 of Derman-Sparks, L. (1989). Anti-Bias Curriculum: Tools for Empowering Young Children. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children.] Bill Koehnlein bill@toplab.org "My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." --George W. Bush, May 1, 2003 "...I told the American people that the road ahead would be difficult, and that we would prevail. Well, it has been difficult--and we are prevailing." --George W. Bush, June 28, 2005 U.S. military fatalities through May 1, 2003: 140 U.S. military fatalities through June 28, 2005: 1743 U.S. military fatalities as of November 23, 2006: 2868 (this figure exceeds the number of people killed at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001) Iraqi civilian fatalities through May 1, 2003: 1982 Iraqi civilian fatalities through June 28, 2005 (estimated by IraqBodyCount.net): 22,563 25,560* Iraqi civilian fatalities as of November 23, 2006 (estimated by IraqBodyCount.net): 47,440 52,642* Iraqi civilian fatalities as of July 2006 (estimated by The Lancet): 654,965 *These figures are based on the number of fatalities cited in various news reports and have been criticized, with much justification, for not giving an accurate assessment of the real civilian death count. A much more rigorous and statistically-reliable study, conducted by teams from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and Al-Mustansiriya University, and published in The Lancet (the British medical journal) in the Fall of 2004, put the figure at around 100,000 civilians dead. However, that data had been based on "conservative assumptions", according to research team leader Les Roberts, and the actual count at that time was credibly assumed to be significantly higher. For example, The Lancet study's data greatly underestimated fatalities in Fallujah due to the surveying problems encountered there at that time. Most recently, a second Lancet study, released on October 10, 2006, now indicates that 654,965 "excess" deaths of Iraqi civilians have occurred since the outbreak of the aggression and genocide committed by the United States against the people of Iraq. Sources: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ http://icasualties.org/oif/ http://www.zmag.org/lancet.pdf http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1338749,00.html http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/Iraq_war.html http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php4?article_id=6271 http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20041025/008279.html http://www.thelancet.com/webfiles/images/journals/lancet/s0140673606694919.pdf ------------=_45654F2E.4748130E-- * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org .List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ .Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================