Thanksgiving Fights Back

I love the simplicity of Thanksgiving. You gather with family and friends. You pile up mountains of food and drink. And then you gorge. You may have political fights with your racist purple-haired niece or listen to your Marxist granddad rant about the necessity of immediately bringing about a proletarian revolution,¹ but by the third helping, even little Emily’s eyes glaze over, soothed by the tryptophan² and the necessity of digesting all that gravy-soaked stuffing.

Thanksgiving is the most American of holidays, representing all the excess that has made this country stupendously mega-awesome.

And The Nation magazine wants to ruin it!

The Nation’s tweet links to a Thanksgiving article by Native American activists Sean Sherman and Chase Iron Eyes, who supposedly take the pro and con positions on the holiday, but in reality, both writers are anti-Thanksgiving curmudgeons, just in different ways.

Sherman starts by demanding we make the holiday an exploration of the truth because Thanksgiving is “steeped in colonialism, violence, and misrepresentation.”

I do not think we need to end Thanksgiving. But we do need to decolonize it.³ That means centering the Indigenous perspective and challenging the colonial narratives around the holiday…

…This Thanksgiving, let’s break the bonds of colonization and capitalism—not just on our plates but in our perspectives

So let’s sit around the dinner table and explore the evils of capitalism?

Even more hostile, Chase Iron Eyes sees a Thanksgiving dripping in blood.

During this other early Thanksgiving, in 1637, European settlers gave thanks after their men returned safe from a raid on the Pequot, an Indigenous tribe living in present-day Connecticut, which led to the massacre of between 400 and 700 women, children, and men and the enslavement of those who survived. In this story, there is no mutual thanks; there is no giving. There is only consumption and taking…

…Thanksgiving could be something better: a day to appreciate the truth of American history and Native Americans’ contributions to our lives. Let’s tell a different story by dropping the lie of Thanksgiving and begin a Truthsgiving.

Ok, lemme be fair here. For many Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a mixed bag. European settlers came to their land and conquered, spreading diseases and murdering as they went. They lost land, and they had much of their culture erased. Native Americans still suffer more than their fellow citizens. Pre-Covid, Native Americans had an average life expectancy of 71.8 years compared to 74.8 years for black Americans and 78.8 years for white Americans. That’s reality, and I have no problem with any Native Americans who don’t want to celebrate the holiday.

But that Truthsgiving thing is a mixed bag. Chase Iron Eyes mentions the Pequot massacre, but leaves out that the Pequot War was partly caused by Pequot threats to other local tribes. Because the Pequot had been attacking their neighbors, the English had Narragansett and Mohegan allies when they assaulted the Pequot Fort and massacred the villagers.

And do Americans live on stolen land? Sure, in a sense, that’s true, but so does pretty much everybody on planet Earth. The French stole their land from the Romans, who stole their land from the Gauls. Iron Eyes and Sherman are both Sioux and many Sioux think that the United States should give back the Black Hills (home to Mount Rushmore), which were stolen in 1876 after prospecters found gold in the mountains. However, the Sioux themselves had stolen the Black Hills from the Cheyenne a hundred years earlier. Portraying native peoples as peaceful innocents robbed by warlike Europeans erases reality. Like all humans, Native Americans could be violent and ruthless.

They called themselves Dine, or Indeh, which means "the people," a name they shared with their linguistic relatives, the Navajos. It is likely that they migrated south as one people but then split apart from the Navajos as they moved to the south and west, preying on those unfortunate enough to be in their way. In time the Navaios became bitter enemies to their southern cousins. These southern people came to be known to all by the name given them by their Zuni victims—Apache, "the enemy."
from The Apache Wars, by Paul Andrew Hutton (2016)

The Nation article preaches the kind of hagiography of indigenous peoples that is popular on the left. It has the oddly dehumanizing effect of turning them into caricatures rather than people. Super pure and superhuman. For example, Chase Iron Eyes claims that Native Americans inspired everything from sunglasses to democracy.

“American” democracy itself was derived from observations of the Iroquois confederacy. The interstate highways and trail systems trace Indigenous trade routes. Anesthetics, rubber, sunglasses, kayaks, canoes, plant medicines, oral contraceptives, and paleo, organic, and non-GMO lifestyles derive from Indigenous practices.

I’m not going to research the origins of sunglasses (I’m super skeptical), but the democracy roots story is a myth that just won’t die. Yes, guys like Ben Franklin did notice that the Iroquois had a confederacy. Ben wrote in a 1751 letter that

It would be a very strange Thing, if six Nations of ignorant Savages, should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an Union, and be able to execute it in such a Manner, as that it has subsisted Ages, and appears indissoluble; and yet that a like Union should be impracticable for ten or a Dozen English Colonies

However, the Iroquois Confederacy was not a model for America’s constitution. Responding to a popular meme asserting that the Iroquois had inspired the Consitution, PolitiFact rejected the claim.

Major elements of the Iroquois system are altogether absent in the U.S. government, including hereditary, clan-based governance, and the meme focuses on Iroquois influences to the exclusion of European precedents that are at least as important, and likely more so.

On balance, we rate the claim Mostly False.

Furthermore, when we read that Sean Sherman and Chase Iron Eyes condemn Thanksgiving, we should remember that they don’t speak for all Native people. The Great Falls Tribune surveyed a selection of Native Americans and got a range of answers on the holiday:

Leslie Stump-Meyers, 35, Chippewa Cree: Celebrating the colonization of Indigenous people is sad. Instead, we celebrate by remembering what our ancestors went through and how they persevered.

Kirby Drake, 36, Crow: It's somber, but I like the food. I definitely don't partake in the common myths of the Natives and pilgrims being friends. Instead, I focus on gratitude.

Matt Wacker, 49, Blackfeet, Haida, Tlingit and Cherokee: I give thanks for what my ancestors survived over many generations. I'm proud but also saddened by their struggles and the lack of acknowledgment by the broader population.

Sunni Grotberg, 20, Little Shell: I love Thanksgiving. I'm familiar with the horrific events after the first Thanksgiving, but I choose not to let hatred fester. I believe it's important to know and remember what happened in the past so we don't repeat the same mistakes, but it's equally important to forgive.

A few days ago, Native-American writer Sherman Alexie (author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian) wrote on Substack:⁴

It’s Thanksgiving week and that means millions of white liberals and leftists will be issuing empty and performative apologies to us Native Americans…while approximately 93% of us Natives will be celebrating Thanksgiving. Also, we really can’t understand those apologies when they’re delivered with a mouth full of turkey and cranberry sauce.

And most Americans are going to ignore all of this.

Eighty-three percent of Americans will be celebrating Thanksgiving, according to an Economist/YouGov poll (and 87% say they usually celebrate).⁵ Seventy percent will have Turkey, 27% ham, 56% stuffing, and 12% Brussels sprouts. (And despite the cliché, only 16% say there are political arguments at their Thanksgiving celebrations.)

I don’t know what percentage will be apologizing for America’s crimes, but I live in a very liberal city with incredibly liberal friends, and I’ve never heard anyone issue any Thanksgiving apologies. In fact, the whole Pilgrim thing hasn’t come up since I was in middle school.

This makes sense. Historically, Thanksgiving was not about the Pilgrims. It’s true the Pilgrims celebrated a harvest festival back in 1621, but harvest festivals are an ancient human tradition.⁶ During the early years of the United States, some states declared official “thanksgiving” days, but Thanksgiving did not become a federal holiday until 1863, largely thanks to the tireless efforts of a forgotten American heroine.

Thanksgiving’s godmother was Sarah Josepha Hale, a writer, reformer, and abolitionist. In 1837, she became the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, a popular monthly women’s journal that reached one hundred and fifty thousand subscribers in 1860. Hale liked the idea of a national Thanksgiving Day to celebrate American patriotism. Using her influential platform, publishing articles, and writing personal letters, she tried to convince governors, congressmen, and others to establish a national Thanksgiving Day. By 1861, 24 of 34 states celebrated a day of thanksgiving. Finally, after receiving one of these letters from Hale, Abraham Lincoln called for a Thanksgiving Day on the last Thursday in November 1863. Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward (who had also received a letter from Hale!), drafted a proclamation that thanked God for all the “bounties” America enjoyed, even in the “midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity.” Lincoln’s Thanksgiving proclamation made no mention of the Pilgrims. The holiday was a way to bring Americans together as Lincoln struggled to preserve the Union. Our modern Thanksgiving began not as a buttress of colonial oppression but rather as a battle cry of freedom slapped across the face of slave-holding rebels.

Thanksgiving was and remains a unifying holiday. No matter who you are, Thanksgiving can be yours. Thomas Nast’s 1869 cartoon “Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner” illustrates an idealized vision of an America united at the Thanksgiving table. Ex-slaves and Chinese immigrants sit on either side of “Columbia,” the female representation of America, while across the table, Uncle Sam carves the turkey. The table centerpiece is labeled “Universal Suffrage,” and a Native American sits to its right.

Obviously, America has not always lived up to Nast’s high-minded ideals, but that’s the dream around which the holiday was built. It was not a crowing holiday to trumpet victory over Native Americans but a celebration of everything that makes America great and holds Americans together.

Now, if you don’t think America is all that great, Thanksgiving may not be your bowl of creamy mashed potatoes. More in Common did a survey back in 2020 and found that the most liberal 8% of Americans—who they labeled “Progressive Activists”—were the only group where a majority said they didn’t have pride in being an American. I imagine that The Nation gets most of its subscribers from these progressives.

To my eleven Nation readers, I’ll ask, do you really think America is more racist than France or Sudan? More militaristic than Russia or China? More homophobic than Iran, Kenya, or Myanmar? And do you think you’ll fix America by trying to tear down our most important unifying holiday? Is attacking Thanksgiving going to improve the lives of struggling Americans? Or is it just performative self-flagellation designed to impress your radical chic bougie friends?⁷

As for me, I like America. She’s not perfect, but who is? She started her journey by declaring “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” and those are good words. Sure, it took a while to live up to those words, but we are all works in progress. America beat the Nazis in World War Two and outlasted the Soviet Union during the Cold War. She is the home of innovations ranging from the iPhone to the McRib. She continues to welcome immigrants from all over the world. And if we’re not as welcoming as I would like, it’s a credit to America that so many are so eager to reach her shores. What do they know that The Nation readers don’t?

As Ronald Reagan said in his final Oval Office address:

She [America] is still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, however long you’ve been here. Welcome home.

1. “Real Marxism has never been tried!”

2. Tryptophan is an amino acid found in turkey that can promote sleep. “Experts” say there isn’t enough tryptophan in a turkey dinner to make you sleepy, but experts haven’t seen Grandpa Myron snoring in the middle of the desert course.

3. Whereas I think we need to decolonize the word “decolonize.” These guys need a new catchphrase.

4. I found the Alexie quote thanks to Nancy Rommelmann, whose awesome Substack you really should read!

5. Shocking to me, only 56% will have pie.

6. That original Pilgrim and Native American gathering wasn’t just a party celebrating survival but also a feast confirming a military alliance between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags, who had allied themselves to the English settlers because they feared the military might of the Narragansett tribe to the west. In the short run, the alliance paid off, with English expeditions helping the Wampanoags against their rivals. In the long run, of course, the newcomers would overwhelm both the Narragansetts and Wampanoags.

7. The New York magazine article “Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's” (1970) by Tom Wolfe popularized a term to describe upper-class folks who like to associate themselves with far-left causes while sipping bespoke cocktails and nibbling at frou frou hors d’oeuvres.