This makes a really important point, it seems to me, Michael. I feel no little shame that the American national Thanksgiving holiday seems totally to ignore or eclipse the suffering that colonization produced for the native peoples. I feel shame because my own family history is so intertwined with the expulsion of the native peoples from their land, as the nation expanded westward.
The grand irony of the feast we celebrate today in memory of the founders of the nation (Puritans, typically, though the first thanksgiving at Jamestown predated the Puritan one) is that many of the foods that are central to the Thanksgiving table are contributions of the native people.
I wonder how comfortable those teepees and igloos were.
I wonder also about the condition of the Native American today, compared to, let's say, the Native Australian today.
I wonder also what the world would have been like without the new world's brainpower and technological creations.
Would I have been surviving on a diet of potatoes and milk (a reasonably nutritious diet, by the way) in Ireland or Poland, keeping warm sleeping next to the pigs living in my one room house?
This makes a really important point, it seems to me, Michael. I feel no little shame that the American national Thanksgiving holiday seems totally to ignore or eclipse the suffering that colonization produced for the native peoples. I feel shame because my own family history is so intertwined with the expulsion of the native peoples from their land, as the nation expanded westward.
ReplyDeleteThe grand irony of the feast we celebrate today in memory of the founders of the nation (Puritans, typically, though the first thanksgiving at Jamestown predated the Puritan one) is that many of the foods that are central to the Thanksgiving table are contributions of the native people.
Who have been long since shoved from the table.
Thanks for posting this.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how comfortable those teepees and igloos were.
ReplyDeleteI wonder also about the condition of the Native American today, compared to, let's say, the Native Australian today.
I wonder also what the world would have been like without the new world's brainpower and technological creations.
Would I have been surviving on a diet of potatoes and milk (a reasonably nutritious diet, by the way) in Ireland or Poland, keeping warm sleeping next to the pigs living in my one room house?