Native American Version Of Thanksgiving

How do Native Americans make peace with a national holiday that romanticizes the 1621 encounter between their ancestors and English settlers, and erases the deadly conflicts that followed?

Although Native American people have always given thanks for the world around them, the Thanksgiving holiday celebrated today is more a combination of Puritan religious practices and the European festival called Harvest Home, which then grew to encompass Native foods. These materials offer Native perspectives on Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving, particularly of the event's Native American participants. Most texts and supplementary materials portray Native Americans at the gathering as supporting players. They are depicted as nameless, faceless, generic quotIndiansquot who merely shared a meal with the intrepid Pilgrims. The real story is much deeper, richer, and more nuanced.

The Thanksgiving story deeply rooted in America's school curriculum frames the Pilgrims as the main characters and reduces the Wampanoag Indians to supporting roles. It also erases a

When most people think of Thanksgiving, they envision a traditional feast with roasted turkey, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. However, many are unaware that the celebration of Thanksgiving has deep roots in Native American culture. Native Americans have been observing harvest festivals long before the arrival of European settlers, and their traditions continue to play a significant role in

The real history of Thanksgiving from the Native American perspective tells a different story than you may know, The mainstream version of the Thanksgiving story paints a picture of courageous Christian settlers braving the perils of the New World and, with the help of some friendly Natives, finding a way to make a new life for themselves.

However, like all groups, Native Americans are not a monolith and have different perspectives on Thanksgiving. For example, some tribes view the holiday as a national day of mourning shown above

What he had discovered were 1100 to 850-year-old banquet rooms for celebrating the Native American version of Thanksgiving. Some of the banquet halls at Ocmulgee could hold 500 people or more. Communal feasts, involving invocations that gave thanks to one or more deities, appears to be ancient and widespread indigenous traditions in North

Joshua Arce, president and CEO of the Partnership With Native Americans, still participates in Thanksgiving, but views the holiday as a way to gather with family and celebrate Indigenous culture.

The quotFirst Thanksgivingquot is often portrayed as a friendly harvest celebration where Pilgrims and generic, nameless Indians came together to eat and give thanks. Giving Thanks A Native American Good Morning Message by Chief Jake Swamp Lee amp Low Books, 1997 Greet the Dawn the Lakota Way by S.D. Nelson South Dakota Historical Society Press