Thanksgiving Day is holocaust denial サンクスギビング＝原住民大虐殺祝祭日

By Robert Jensen comments_image 39 COMMENTS
I'm the Guy Who People Think Hates Thanksgiving
My rejection of Thanksgiving is more intellectual than emotional, a political decision to reject that distortion of history. But my feelings go beyond that, too.
November 27, 2013






The Meaning of Thanksgivingby Robert Jensen, Alex Doherty

Some aspects of the conventional story are accurate, but 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 genocidal project that opened up additional land to the English invaders. That was the beginning of the conquest of the entire continent, until 95 to 99 percent of American Indianshad been exterminated and the rest were left to assimilate into white society or die off on reservations.

That is the American holocaust, and the Thanksgiving story wraps that holocaust in fantasies of innocence. Instead of celebrating a day of thanksgiving, we should be observing a day of atonement. In short, Thanksgiving Day is holocaust denial.

No Thanks to Thanksgiving
Instead, we should atone for the genocide that was incited -- and condoned -- by the very men we idolize as our 'heroic' founding fathers.
November 22, 2005

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 up additional land to the English invaders. The pattern would repeat itself across the continent until between 95 and 99 percent of American Indians had been exterminated and the rest were left to assimilate into white society or die off on reservations, out of the view of polite society.

Simply put: Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers.

By Robert Jensen comments_image COMMENT NOW!
Why We Shouldn't Celebrate Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving Day should be turned into a National Day of Atonement to acknowledge the genocide of America's indigenous peoples.
November 21, 2007 |

Once we know, what do we do?

At this point in history, anyone who wants to know this reality of U.S. history -- that the extermination of indigenous peoples was, both in a technical, legal sense and in common usage, genocide -- can easily find the resources to know. If this idea is new, I would recommend two books, David E. Stannard's American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World and Ward Churchill's A Little Matter of Genocide . While the concept of genocide, which is defined as the deliberate attempt "to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group," came into existence after World War II, it accurately describes the program that Europeans and their descendants pursued to acquire the territory that would become the United States of America.

Once we know that, what do we do? The moral response -- that is, the response that would be consistent with the moral values around justice and equality that most of us claim to hold -- would be a truth-and-reconciliation process that would not only correct the historical record but also redistribute land and wealth. In the white-supremacist and patriarchal society in which we live, operating within the parameters set by a greed-based capitalist system, such a process is hard to imagine in the short term. So, the question for left/radical people is: What political activity can we engage in to keep alive this kind of critique until a time when social conditions might make a truly progressive politics possible?

In short: Once we know, what do we do in a world that is not yet ready to know, or knows but will not deal with the consequences of that knowledge?

The general answer to that question is simple, though often difficult to put into practice: We must keep speaking honestly, as often as possible, in as many venues as possible. We must resist the conventional wisdom. We must reject the cultural amnesia. We must refuse to be polite when politeness means capitulation to lies.

　インディアンにとっての大量虐殺の始まりの日を美化して、それをなんと祝っているのはおかしいんじゃないか、と。

　かなり前から言われていることですが、主要なメディアではお祝い気分一辺倒で、本気でとりあげられることはないようです。　論者は白人至上主義社会では原住民に土地を返すなどは、無理だろうが、しかし、真実は言い続ける必要がある、と。

（サンクスギビング　感謝祭）