Vanessa C. Winters 1465188812@qq.com NOV. 25 is Thanksgiving in the U.S. this year. What has been mostly taught to us since we were kids is that this is the day for celebrating the year’s harvest and other blessings. It was based on the story of the pilgrims sharing an autumn harvest feast with the Wampanoag Indians in 1621. For over two centuries, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states. Thanksgiving Day was not an official holiday until the mid-19th century, when tensions arose, and a war was looming in the country between the north and the south. Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of the popular Godey’s Lady’s Book magazine, campaigned for a national Thanksgiving Day to promote unity. On Oct. 3, 1863, amid the Civil War, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be celebrated every Nov. 26. However, it was President Franklin D. Roosevelt who issued a proclamation in 1942 designating the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day, which has been observed up to now. We were taught the “Disney-fied” or the fairy tale-like version of Thanksgiving in school as a symbol of the pilgrims battling odds escaping oppression to arrive in America after a perilous journey and work alongside the natives, who were key to the pilgrims’ survival during the first year after arriving in their new colony. We had Thanksgiving-centered activities from preschool onwards, such as coloring turkey figures, creating Thanksgiving icons like turkeys and pumpkins in our arts and crafts classes, and having “Pie Day” and sharing a Thanksgiving feast in school before the holiday. As a kid, it was a nice and happy time to celebrate this holiday – lots of delicious food, everyone in the family gathering from all over the country, no school for a couple of days, watching local parades and watching a lot of TV for the day. Through the years, as I started to learn more about my home country’s culture as well as experiencing challenges being different in the U.S., it dawned to me that the U.S. isn’t exactly as welcoming as the whole “melting pot” concept it peddles to the world. When I was in high school and older students would call me a bunch of slurs for being Asian, I began to wonder – did the natives and pilgrims really get along on that first harvest feast? Were the pilgrims really as “benevolent” as the stories I was told? Because for sure, with what I’ve known so far about Western colonization, it rarely was a diplomatic and benevolent affair. Later on, I had a colleague with Native American heritage and asked her opinion about Thanksgiving. She debunked the whole fairy tale story I had learned and rather painted a darker picture of colonialism and its damage to colonized people and communities. In 2007, Seattle public school officials made national news describing Thanksgiving as “a time of mourning” and a “bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for friendship” in a paper called “Deconstructing the Myths of ‘The First Thanksgiving.’” This showed the pilgrims in another light as arrogant oppressors who deprived Native Americans of their land, culture and lives. Various opinions popped up on this paper ranging from being un-American to creating more division, being destructive and taking away the spirit of Thanksgiving. It did, however, shed light in terms of political correctness and awareness on race and actual history, not the sanitized version taught in schools. People being colonized have nothing to be thankful for if their land was usurped, their culture trivialized and butchered, and if they get treated like second-class citizens in their native land, and up to now, Native Americans still do not reap the bounty of what is rightfully their homeland. I was rather appalled to learn that Native Americans weren’t even made full U.S. citizens until 1924. Despite having 574 recognized tribes in the U.S., the total Native American population is only 6.79 million, which is about 2.09 percent of the entire U.S. population, according to the 2021 U.S. Census Bureau. Native Americans have the highest poverty rate of any major racial group, with one in four people living below the poverty line; they face constant threats from federal and state governments for land use and resource extraction, they face high rates of chronic diseases, discrimination, unemployment, alcoholism and drug abuse, and they have to grapple with preserving their culture for future generations. Indeed, what is there to be thankful for in their case? As much as the U.S. still prides itself as a country of immigrants, people of color like me see Thanksgiving differently as we try to find and establish our own identity in this country without losing our own cultural heritage. There are still many things in life to be thankful for that go beyond a one-day holiday towards the end of the year. The U.S. has a lot of work to do internally to address the growing rifts in its core being, but at the end of the day, the Thanksgiving spirit of people working together and helping each other still counts after all, and that should be celebrated. (The author is a Shenzhen Daily copy editor.) | 