While Thanksgiving has been normalized to many Americans as a time to celebrate gratefulness for the country’s origins, all sides of American history should be taught. It is now a holiday of another nation’s cruelty. To think there was finally a tranquil day in American history, but if taught correctly, it is gallons of innocent bloodshed over an unnecessary fight for power.
Instead, it’s a day of feasts, giving, and thanks which are shared with the loveliest of values: family. It gives a chance for those who have been apart to come together. It’s intended to carry on the themes of the first Thanksgiving: freedom, opportunity and acceptance. This holiday is so accurately backward, and it almost seems intentional. It’s all about perspective.
According to the History Channel, Governor William Bradford, in November 1621, invited the Natives for a feast to celebrate their shared land and declare to each other everlasting fidelity, allowing both groups of people to prosper from that day on.
Now, according to the Wampanoag Tribe, one day the tribe heard gunfire and assumed the pilgrims were under attack. It instead turned out to be a party so the Natives were going to retreat. Instead, they decided to stay. They stayed for three days to grow their alliance which wasn’t quite a friendship. They then parted ways as acquainted neighbors.
As the years went on the colonies grew, massacre by massacre, village after village. In fact, to mark their second victory the colonists proudly presented the head of the Wampanoags’ chief’s son on a pike at the top of their village as a trophy of their conquest against the ‘American Indian Resistance’. They also enslaved, executed and gave Natives reservations on their own land to attempt a compromise.
This is what should be taught, but most schools teach only one side and call it, “The growth of English settlers” or “How America began.” It’s awful and continues to be taught wrong.
The very least of respect that could be paid is for the correct history to be taught and for academia to not give the impression that everything that happened is okay. It isn’t and needs to stop being sugar-coated and acted out as a fun play for elementary schools. It’s incredibly disrespectful. It was fisting against guns over land and who would call America theirs: The invaders or those who were already here, who once happily lived in a land they called home.
To this day the Native American people still fight for their culture and heritage, doing everything in their power to preserve what once was and what still has a chance to be. In a perfect world, their stories would be told truthfully, their lives would’ve never been taken and their land would still be theirs. History cannot be rewritten, but it can be told correctly.