23 November 2018 - Native Americans Mark Thanksgiving with a Day of Mourning
Native Americans mark Thanksgiving with day of mourning
Associated Press (ABC News, 22/11/2018)
Thanksgiving is nothing to celebrate for Native Americans, who are gathering in the town where the Pilgrims settled for a solemn National Day of Mourning observance.
Thursday's noon gathering in downtown Plymouth, Massachusetts, will recall the disease, racism and oppression that the European settlers brought.
It's the 49th year that the United American Indians of New England have organized the event on Thanksgiving Day.
What Educators Need To Know About Teaching Thanksgiving
Mayowa Aina (NPR, 22/11/2018)
Large community potlucks and school plays where students dress up as Pilgrims and Indians help students learn the familiar story of the very first Thanksgiving. The holiday gives schools an opportunity to bring history to life for their young students. Although it wasn't called Thanksgiving in 1620, the story celebrates Pilgrims and Native Americans coming together to celebrate a successful harvest.
But Thanksgiving isn't a celebration for everyone, particularly Native Americans, and navigating that nuance can be difficult for some educators.
This Thanksgiving, read a Native American poet’s song of healing
Lora Strum (PBS News, 22/11/2018)
In many elementary schools across the country, students have stuck feathers on brown paper sacks to make Native American headdresses, carefully cut out patterns for large black Pilgrim hats with shiny gold buckles, and met over cafeteria lunch tables adorned with platters of cranberry sauce and green beans to reenact a story of Thanksgiving that has been handed down through generations.
But for poet Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, that narrative of the first Thanksgiving — when historians believe English pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe gathered in modern-day Plymouth, Massachusetts — isn’t about breaking bread, but rather the effort to eradicate an entire population.
“What were they celebrating? [The Pilgrims] were celebrating taking over. They were celebrating colonization. They were not celebrating the indigenous people who had helped them survive,” she said.
Indianapolis woman offers Native American perspective on Thanksgiving
Graham Hunter (RTV, 22/11/2018)
An Indianapolis woman is challenging the traditional narrative of Thanksgiving after RTV6 reached out for a Native American perspective on the holiday.Thanksgiving has been celebrated across the United States since 1863. It is a day that holds a much different significance for Native Americans than the story that is often taught to youngsters in school.
In the traditional story the pilgrims come over, the Native Americans helped them and there was this kind of kumbaya moment.