This is a piece I wrote some years ago before I had children. I did, however, feel I was writing it for them as I sat with my editor pestering me with calls to get it done. Typing away at my laptop on our kitchen table in Berkeley I could feel myself addressing my unborn children. Strange, I know. Now that I have children, I am faced with the question, how does one explain these things to a child? My mother had taken the route in the consciousness-raising 1970's of filling me with stories about what had happened and allowing the chips fall where they may. I experienced as a child of five or so the first true feelings of political outrage. Outrage on behalf of a people, the poli. A feeling beyond my normal childish outrage at the loss of a toy or the singular attention of a parent. Outrage at not just the past, but the continued injustice of the basic fact of the invasion and the additional burden of living under the myth of American moral superiority. And I was filled with a desire to change that when I was just five. I think we forget, sometimes, the great wells of desire to do good that each of us are born with. I see this in my children all the time. My mother lit that fire in me as she talked to me about the stolen land, the Long Walk and smaller injustices as we washed dishes together over the kitchen sink in Denver. And those feelings have never been assuaged or lessened-- as I wish they might have been by now. Now, when I tell my daughter who is six, as I am in this piece, and who looks and talks so much like me at that age, I see the same tightening of the tiny fists and that same look of determination coming over her young, bright eyes. And I wonder, is it right to tell her? But how long could I keep up the lie?
So, here it is, my ode to the holiday. Enjoy.
I celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving.
This may surprise those people who wonder what Native Americans think of this official U.S. celebration of the survival of early arrivals in a European invasion that culminated in the death of 10 to 30 million native people.
Thanksgiving to me has never been about Pilgrims. When I was six, my mother, a woman of the Dineh nation, told my sister and me not to sing "Land of the Pilgrim's pride" in "America the Beautiful." Our people, she said, had been here much longer and taken much better care of the land. We were to sing "Land of the Indian's pride" instead.
I was proud to sing the new lyrics in school, but I sang softly. It was enough for me to know the difference. At six, I felt I had learned something very important. As a child of a Native American family, you are part of a very select group of survivors, and I learned that my family possessed some "inside" knowledge of what really happened when those poor, tired masses came to our homes.
When the Pilgrims came to Plymouth Rock, they were poor and hungry -- half of them died within a few months from disease and hunger. When Squanto, a Wampanoag man, found them, they were in a pitiful state. He spoke English, having traveled to Europe, and took pity on them. Their English crops had failed. The native people fed them through the winter and taught them how to grow their food.
These were not merely "friendly Indians." They had already experienced European slave traders raiding their villages for a hundred years or so, and they were wary -- but it was their way to give freely to those who had nothing. Among many of our peoples, showing that you can give without holding back is the way to earn respect. Among the Dakota, my father's people, they say, when asked to give, "Are we not Dakota and alive?" It was believed that by giving there would be enough for all -- the exact opposite of the system we live in now, which is based on selling, not giving.
To the Pilgrims, and most English and European peoples, the Wampanoags were heathens, and of the Devil. They saw Squanto not as an equal but as an instrument of their God to help his chosen people, themselves.
Since that initial sharing, Native American food has spread around the world. Nearly 70 percent of all crops grown today were originally cultivated by Native American peoples. I sometimes wonder what they ate in Europe before they met us. Spaghetti without tomatoes? Meat and potatoes without potatoes? And at the "first Thanksgiving" the Wampanoags provided most of the food -- and signed a treaty granting Pilgrims the right to the land at Plymouth, the real reason for the first Thanksgiving.
What did the Europeans give in return? Within 20 years European disease and treachery had decimated the Wampanoags. Most diseases then came from animals that Europeans had domesticated. Cowpox from cows led to smallpox, one of the great killers of our people, spread through gifts of blankets used by infected Europeans. Some estimate that diseases accounted for a death toll reaching 90 percent in some Native American communities. By 1623, Mather the elder, a Puritan leader, was giving thanks to his God for destroying the heathen savages to make way "for a better growth," meaning his people.
In stories told by the Dakota people, an evil person always keeps his or her heart in a secret place separate from the body. The hero must find that secret place and destroy the heart in order to stop the evil.
I see, in the "First Thanksgiving" story, a hidden Pilgrim heart. The story of that heart is the real tale than needs to be told. What did it hold? Bigotry, hatred, greed, self-righteousness? We have seen the evil that it caused in the 350 years since. Genocide, environmental devastation, poverty, world wars, racism.
Where is the hero who will destroy that heart of evil? I believe it must be each of us. Indeed, when I give thanks this Thursday and I cook my native food, I will be thinking of this hidden heart and how my ancestors survived the evil it caused.
Because if we can survive, with our ability to share and to give intact, then the evil and the good will that met that Thanksgiving day in the land of the Wampanoag will have come full circle.
And the healing can begin.
5 comments:
Thank you. Now I can be happy and thankful today. With you. And our children. Let the circle be unbroken.
VERY WELL SAID. I COMMEND THIS ACCURATE ACCOUNTING AND YOUR COURAGEOUS WAY OF ADDRESSING IT HEAD ON.
WE MUST ALWAYS PROTECT OUR CHILDREN; HOWEVER, THE TRUTH IS STILL THE TRUTH, NO MATTER HOW PAINFUL THAT IT MAY BE.
WE DO NOT WISH TO INSTILL FEAR IN OUR CHILDREN, YET HIDING THE TRUTH IS NOT THE WAY TO PROTECT THEM.
DESPITE THE ATROCITIES AND UGLY HISTORY OF THIS TIME; AFTER ACKNOWLEDGING THE TRUTH, WE CAN ALL STILL FIND TIME TO REALISTICALLY REFLECT UPON THINGS FOR WHICH WE CAN BE TRULY THANKFUL.
TODAY (AS ALL DAYS), I AM THANKFUL FOR MANY THINGS. I AM MOST THANKFUL FOR THE AIR WHICH WE BREATHE, THE WATER WHICH SUSTAINS LIFE, THE GIFTS OF OUR MOTHER EARTH, AND THE MANY RELATIVES WHOSE LIVES WERE TAKEN SO THAT WE MAY HAVE NOURISHMENT.
I ASK FORGIVENESS FOR OUR HAVING CAUSED THIS LOSS OF LIFE.
THESE ARE THINGS WHICH WE MUST NEVER TAKE FOR GRANTED; JUST AS ALL WHO ARE HERE NOW IN THIS PLACE, MUST NEVER FORGET ALL OF THE DEATH AND DESTRUCTION THAT PRECEDED OUR BEING HERE NOW.
WE HAVE THE GREATEST RESPONSIBILITY TO RESPECT OUR MOTHER EARTH, AND TO UNDERSTAND THAT AS HUMAN BEINGS, WE ONLY DWELL HERE.
WE OWN NOTHING . . . NOTHING!
PERHAPS TODAY, WE SHOULD ALSO PRAY THAT THE HIDDEN HEARTS OF EVIL WHICH ARE SCATTERED AROUND OUR CAPITAL, WILL BE FOUND AND VANQUISHED.
ALL THINGS HAVE MANY ENEMIES AMONG THE FORCES OF EVIL. THEY COME FROM EVERY RACE, EVERY RELIGION, AND EVERY COUNTRY.
I PRAY THAT THE BRIGHTEST HEALING LIGHT WILL ENTER THESE DARK HEARTS.
I THEN PRAY THAT THEY WILL BE SO ILLUMINATED THAT THE LOVE WITHIN WILL SHINE ACROSS THE WORLD.
FOR THOSE INCAPABLE OF GOODNESS; MAY THEY SHRIVEL AND DESINTEGRATE IN THE LIGHT OF TRUTH.
AS YOU HAVE BEEN A LIGHT OF TRUTH, I ASK FOR SPECIAL BLESSINGS AND STRENGTH FOR YOU, YOUR FAMILY, YOUR HUSBAND AND CHILDREN.
WI-BTHAH-HOHN (THANK YOU)
WHITEHORSE
Thank you for sharing these words. I think I will spend some time today reflecting on where the evil still lives in my own heart, so that I can work to bring healing.
A lovely essay...
Been thinking about this ever since...
In stories told by the Dakota people, an evil person always keeps his or her heart in a secret place separate from the body. The hero must find that secret place and destroy the heart in order to stop the evil.
According to the stories my ancestors told, it was the *good* person who kept his or her heart in a secret place separate from the body. Their heroes had to find that secret place and assume the heart as their own in order to stop the evil.
And yet it's apparent, as one of our poets has pointed out, it remains "true of the normal heart" that "the error bred in the bone / Of each woman and each man / Craves what it cannot have, / Not universal love / But to be loved alone."
So I'm thinking, well, no wonder. I think we need to get our stories straight.
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