Why I'm Not Thankful for Thanksgiving by: Michael Dorris
The above mentioned article from Rethinking Schools stood out to me as I searched for an article. The title: Why I'm Not Thankful for Thanksgiving among the faces hidden in the clouds with the word HERITAGE spelled out across the image, immediately drew me in. My students will often hear me quote my late father-in-law, "there are three sides to a story: your side, my side and the truth." I value the differing viewpoints of others, just as I believe in presenting the different sides to the story. We all know the story on the arrival of the Pilgrims and the significance of Thanksgiving. However, whose side is it being told from?
This article, opens with " Native Americans have more than one thing not to be thankful about on Thanksgiving, Pilgrim Day, and its antecedent feast Halloween." From early October through the end of November, "cute little Indians" abound on greeting cards, costumes, and school projects. However, none of the images contain an once of authenticity, historically. Why is it so apparently ingrained?
Thanksgiving, much like most of American history is complex, multifaceted. The perpetuation of this story in classrooms, films, media, and sports has had a major impact on many who identify as Native American, Indian, or Indigenous. Knowing the truth about Thanksgiving both its proud and its shameful motivations and history, might well benefit contemporary children. But the glib retelling of an ethnocentric and self-serving falsehood does not do one any good." It embraces a whitewashed history of Native Americans sitting down happily with the Pilgrims to celebrate a successful year of harvest. This joyous ideal is what we are all taught throughout elementary school, something consequently ingrained in our consciousness.
What is my part? Having a culturally responsive classroom to provide the whole picture, to give students facts that they may not have heard before, and allow them time to learn and discover more about the indigenous people of the United States and not a myth of a happy Thanksgiving dinner. I need to present the complex and interacting factors that influenced the perspectives of people during different historical eras. To teach students how to analyze historical contexts shaped and continue to shape people's perspectives. As Dorris states, we do a disservice to ourselves and to others if we hold just to that depiction.
Attitudes pertinent to "racial" identity are among the most hazardous, for these can easily be internalized, particularly by the "minority" child. Such internalized attitudes profoundly affect self-concept, behavior, aspiration, and confidence. They can inhibit a child before he or she has learned to define personal talents, limits, or objectives and tend to regularly become self-fulfilling prophecies, Young people who are informed that they are going to be underachievers do underachieve with painful regularity. Let's help change the narrative!
Dorris believes that it is the parents' responsibility from the earliest possible age, to make sure children are aware that many people are wrongheaded about not only Native Americans, but also about cultural pluralism in general. Children must be encouraged to articulate any questions they might have about "other" people. And "minority" children must be given ways in which to insulate themselves from real or implied insults, or stereotypes. Protecting children from racism is every bit as important as insuring that they avoid playing with electrical sockets. No one gains by allowing an inequitable and discriminatory status quo to persist.
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This is a powerfully relevant chapter for our current historical moment! I can see so may different lessons -- about race, power, identity -- coming from what you learned in this chapter. I watched Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton over the weekend and believe it asks lots of these same questions (and invites critique as well!)
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