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Native leaders: Thanksgiving holiday is complicated

College events aim to unpack problematic day

By Tatiana Parafiniuk-Talesnick, The Register-Guard
Published: November 28, 2019, 6:52am

Eugene, Ore. — The story of Thanksgiving often told to elementary students is one of friendship and festivities shared between Pilgrims, new immigrants to American colonies, and the Wampanoag, indigenous people who helped feed them in 1621.

But the holiday only became official when, in a show of gratitude for the Union Army victory at Gettysburg in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln decreed the fourth Thursday of every November to be a day of gratitude.

Many years before the holiday became official, President George Washington called for an official day of public thanksgiving and prayer after the American Revolution, while presidents who followed, like Thomas Jefferson, felt public government-backed demonstrations of piety were inappropriate.

Some people with early childhood memories of construction paper Indian headdresses and pilgrim pageants may wonder where the connection lies, as do some Native leaders in the area.

“We continue to perpetuate this idiocy, if you will, (of) pilgrims in black hats and buckle shoes, and Indians in breechcloths in the middle of November, no less, somehow sitting down and being all these great friends and loving each other,” 4J Natives Program Director Brenda Lee Brainard, a member of the Miluk Coos tribe, said.

The strand that connects the first official nationwide Thanksgiving and a tale of peace, kinship, celebration between pilgrims and Native Americans is thin. There are only two surviving documents that reference the meal, according to the Smithsonian, a letter home by English leader Edward Winslow and Gov. William Bradford’s writing in “Of Plymouth Plantation.” The event’s limited historical record hasn’t prevented it from becoming the holiday’s popular origin story.

“As an educator, I’m really disturbed that what we teach about Thanksgiving is so inaccurate, historically,” Brainard said. “Let’s teach Thanksgiving for what it is, there’s nothing wrong with it being a day of national thanksgiving. Our country is so politically divisive right now, there’s nothing wrong with being thankful that we’re still a United States.”

The local educator is not the only one in the area befuddled by the perception of Thanksgiving. Events on various college campuses are dedicated to unpacking what some call a problematic holiday.

On Monday, the Lane Community College Longhouse, a space where Native American students and the community can share their values and cultures, will host a seminar called “Rethinking Thanksgiving: A New American Perspective,” presented by Native American Program Coordinator Lori Tapahonso and James Snyder.

Last week, the University of Oregon Counseling Center, Native American Student Union and Duck Nest Wellness Center hosted their second “Thanks But No Thanks-giving: Decolonizing an American Holiday” seminar.

Various efforts to discuss the complexity of Thanksgiving can be contentious. While this year’s “Thanks but No Thanks-giving” workshop was an uncontroversial hourlong discussion, last year’s inaugural event attracted coverage from various right-wing media groups, including Fox News and Campus Reform. Hosts expected 30 people to attend, but over a hundred people came.

“Last year was a big surprise, to say the least,” said one of the event’s panelists and organizers, Dakota MacColl. “It was an anomaly.”

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Both years of the event intended to provide what MacColl calls a “dialogue and not a debate” around the Thanksgiving narrative. MacColl is Plains Cree/M?tis, a nontraditional undergraduate student studying chemistry, biology and comparative literature, and a peer wellness coordinator at the Duck Nest Wellness Center. She hopes the event can help people approach the holiday with a different perspective.

“It’s a conflicting holiday because we want to express gratitude, we have the time off we want to be thankful for. I get together and I eat with my family, it’s just not in the guise that we’re celebrating this holiday,” MacColl said. “We at the same time have a discussion of what we are grateful for and mourn the loss of millions of people.”

MacColl recalled one Thanksgiving when her family live-streamed violence against Sioux Tribe Dakota Access Pipeline protesters, often called water protectors, as they ate. She said that while she enjoys the time off, it’s always reflective time for her and her family.

One first-year UO student who attended the event, Geena Tsosie, is Din?, also known as Navajo, and shared a similar sentiment. While the holiday is complicated, she looks forward to the time off from school and her first visit back home in New Mexico since she started.

“I celebrate Thanksgiving by trying to celebrate my ancestors and my people, I try to remain mindful of where I’m at and how I got here,” Tsosie said. “So I like to think of my family and what my people had to endure in order to be where we are today.”

Tsosie added that she does her best to use the day off to eat Native foods, spend time on Native lands and reject the way she thinks consumerism is romanticized on Black Friday, a day of Christmas shopping that follows Thanksgiving.

“Whenever I think of Thanksgiving, I like to think that I’m thankful everyday,” Tsosie said. “I’m thankful for my ancestors and for my people for still being here.”

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