how badly native americans had been treated, I decided to stop celebrating Thanksgiving altogether. There were other reasons of course, like often being the hostess of this meal, having to spend many hours preparing and being exhausted when it was all over. I also had changed my diet and stopped eating foods that were basically inflammatory. Of course the whole issue was easier since I never had children.
Back in my teens when I experimented with being vegetarian I remenber being seated at my aunt's table along with my mother's many relatives( this was back in the early 1960's) and how everyone was shocked be cause my plate was not groaning with turkey, gravy and stuffing .I enjoyed the vegetables and salad and had lots of room for pie afterwards.
What stuck me was my relatives trying to make me conform--and overeat like everyone else.
Because we can so easily obtain food throughout the year in this country (for the most part) feast days are far less relevant. Getting together for the sake of uniting is still significant but the overwhelming enotional weight of a highly commercialized relatively new holiday loses more and more meaning to me as I age. I am grateful for my house,for my 9 year old van,for my rowdy dogs, and not being in debt. I make a lot of turkey because ir is cheap and my cats & dogs love it. I do llke turkey soup and punpkin pie but that is where it ends i don't have illl will for anyone celebrating, I just don't. And I am still very uneasy about our Native American residents who continue to have their land plundered.
What I love about God's amazing creation is infinite variety. What works for one person might not work for another. I so get that. I've been an outlier all my life - one who would rather observe than participate. Often looked down on because i did not conform to the norm.
That said, though, having propagated my own tribe I have had the chance to be a part of a group that understands how weird I am and accepts me for that so I take that as a major blessing.
As far as the Native Americans land loss, I have some insight on that. I lived in Tulsa for 20 plus years which was the end of the Trail of Tears. There is a rich Native American history in that part of Oklahoma, especially with the Cherokee tribe. My best friend was half Cherokee because her mother was half and her dad was half, which made her half. She was on the rolls and because of that she had her college education paid for. She had lots of stories growing up in both worlds.
One thing I learned, over the years, historically speaking, was that there has never been a perfect time in human history. Someone is always taking things away from someone else. My heritage is mixed and includes English, Scottish, Cherokee and Black Irish. Many, if not all, of my ancestors had to fight tooth and nail to keep what they had. Most lost. For me, it's about the struggle of the human condition from the very beginning, to rise and fall and rise again. My friend, who is now a retired school teacher, was always proud of her heritage but she never felt as though someone owed her something. She rose and moved on with her life.
I hope you have a lovely day in whatever way is perfect for you.
I have Native American relatives from Chicago who invited me to pow wows as a teenager and I got involved with them politically. Their father is my cousin,and his wife was born on a reservation in Wisconsin and went back there after they divorced. They are Chipawaw. There are a lot of differences among tribes, when I was in Montana, the Flatfeet tribes had reservations near my house, the govt gave them control of the water, bur not the land to continue the power struggle) Here in New Mexico the history is very complicated, with some tribes aligning with Mexicans, others with Spanish settlers or Americans. But more recently many Indians have been damaged by radiation from nuclear blasts (Trinity) or uranium mining in the Grants,N. M area and have not been properly compensated. Gold mining on Navaho lands by international corporations was what I was thinking about, regarding plundering but didb't want to elaborate on. My concern is the continued cartoon characterization of Indians in feathred head dress and fringed buckskins having turkey, corn , cranberry sauce and pie with Pilgrims. It is all a big fantasy. Life is not fair and for the most part Indians have been cheated, tricked and divested of their lands and culture (plentiful buffalo were almost exterminated so cowboys could run cattle and Indians not have a food source)
A proper rememberance of Thanksgiving would be honoring the buffalo ( who were sacrifriced about 150 years ago instead of a turkey dinner perhaps conducted 400 years ago. History taught in schools is highly inaccurate and to some degree mythological. If I were to do a Thanksgiving dinner ever again I would start by asking forgiveness to the peoples whose lands we took over. They continue to be victimized with drugs ,( I have heard drug cartels find reservations attractive) they were given plenty of the covid jabs& subjected to lots of covid propaganda. I know because I signed up for info on national pow wows and everything was about getting grandma and junior shot up when you went to pow wows.
We all really need to pray that Biden does not drag us into nuclear conflict with Russia because no one has had the guts to remove this dangerous idiot and stop his acts of treason
This topic is so deep and wide I don't even know how to keep my words under 10,000. The best I can do is truncate my perspective into generalizations. First, I am a naturalist. I am totally against what so called environmentalists are doing to our world. Seems quite Biblical - a third of the land, third of the seas, third of the forests, third of the animals destroyed - and still they did not repent. (Revelation 8)
I am also a rogue historian who digs into what I always see as history skimmed over. It is quite natural for humans to smooth over the tough stuff to let the memory of a time or incident be more inspiring. I have no idea what really happened at the first 'Thanksgiving' but the tradition we (my family) keep is not a reverent recall of a moment in time elevated to a holiday. Pilgrims, Indians, fellowship over a meal is quaint but doesn't really matter to me. We gather to be grateful for our blessings.
Second, no one knows better than a digger historian how outrageous some have been treated in the last 250 plus years. I so get it. Read the book Code Talkers and you will get a dose of how Native American children were treated in government and religion based schools. I know what suffering happened on the trail of tears to a well established people who lived quite civilly but who owned property that others wanted.
I know what happened during the Dustbowl years, to the once prosperous wheat farmers in Oklahoma, dubbed 'Okies' and vilified as scum when they finally gave up and migrated to California. Bad people in power, otherwise known as government is always at the root of human suffering. Somebody rose to their level of incompetence and decided how others should live and be treated.
Seems like a familiar theme doesn't it? It's how satan keeps us at war with each other. I have no solutions other than prayer. So long as evil people are allowed to be in power, the rest of us will/must suffer. I choose to hide in the light of Christ where satan can't see me.
The spirit of the holiday is what matters-- I have had friends who found Thanksgiving most meaningful when they donated their time to serve the honeless and poor at free community Thanksgiving. meals. I guess I got radicalized early-- a close friend who is Chicano went to support the Lakota during the armed Wounded Knee standoff in the 1970s, and I just learned that Native American activist Leonard Peilter who has been imprisoned for decades is still alive and incarcerated-- our government has a real problem with Indians-- My Chicano friend and I were both at the anti war demonstrations in Chicago in 1968 ( years before we met) He was 15 and had a long black ponytail. The police grabbed him & took him to a large warehouse where he was hung upside down.He was not alone. That is a form of torture -- he was never charged with a crime but the Chicago cops earned their reputation of being called pigs for a reason. He still has symptoms of post rraumatic stress.
I don't discuss ny beliefs with anyone these days, my husband died over twenty years ago so it is much easier for me to be a non-observer. 🙏 when it comes to Thanksgiving. However the US has a lot of unfinished karma in this department and should own up to their role. Sorry I had to burden you, you have made the holiday much more meaningful than most. Blessings and thanks for sharing ..
You did not burden me in the least. I'm pretty sure we could do a lengthy chat over coffee. I have learned so much in the last fifty years. You know today is the 61 anniversary of JFKs assassination. I was a junior in high school. Only full blown dementia could ever erase that day from my memory. Plus I have a photo of my face that was taken the second the office switched on the intercom and a reporter was screaming 'the president's been shot! the president's been shot!'. That photo ended up in the year book. And just think - 61 years later with sooooo much proof who did do it, they are still hiding the documents. Why? Well, I guess because they can't afford for the truth to come out because the house of cards might fall.
I was 16 on my way to English class and the news broke as we climbed the steps to our second floor classrooms-- everyone was sobbing. In class our teacher, an older chap with gray hair probably in his 50's tried to calm us down.All of us loved Kennedy. It was one of the most emotional times of our lives..
Meanwhile I researched Leonard Pelter's case--he was convicted of the murder of two FBI agents ar the Pine Ridge Reservation in June, 1975-- based upon rather shoddy evidence-- a couple of bullet casings ( which could have been planted) this year a bipartisan group of senators pleaded for the Attorney General to release him due to his ill health and evidence showing the trial was suspect-- he was first recommended to be up for parole back in 1993.
Sometimes people become symbols and their existence as liiving humans is ignored.
I just wanted to mention that I have raised turkeys, both domestic and wild. The wild turkeys are tough and skinny and rather gamey. I don't think they would have made such great eating for a "feast." I found turkeys to be incredibly stupid fowl-- my chickens & ducks were far smarter. Perhaps venison was the featured dish 400 years ago? It's a lot easier to dress a deer than pluck a turkey BTW.🙄😏
Many years ago after reflecting upon
how badly native americans had been treated, I decided to stop celebrating Thanksgiving altogether. There were other reasons of course, like often being the hostess of this meal, having to spend many hours preparing and being exhausted when it was all over. I also had changed my diet and stopped eating foods that were basically inflammatory. Of course the whole issue was easier since I never had children.
Back in my teens when I experimented with being vegetarian I remenber being seated at my aunt's table along with my mother's many relatives( this was back in the early 1960's) and how everyone was shocked be cause my plate was not groaning with turkey, gravy and stuffing .I enjoyed the vegetables and salad and had lots of room for pie afterwards.
What stuck me was my relatives trying to make me conform--and overeat like everyone else.
Because we can so easily obtain food throughout the year in this country (for the most part) feast days are far less relevant. Getting together for the sake of uniting is still significant but the overwhelming enotional weight of a highly commercialized relatively new holiday loses more and more meaning to me as I age. I am grateful for my house,for my 9 year old van,for my rowdy dogs, and not being in debt. I make a lot of turkey because ir is cheap and my cats & dogs love it. I do llke turkey soup and punpkin pie but that is where it ends i don't have illl will for anyone celebrating, I just don't. And I am still very uneasy about our Native American residents who continue to have their land plundered.
y
What I love about God's amazing creation is infinite variety. What works for one person might not work for another. I so get that. I've been an outlier all my life - one who would rather observe than participate. Often looked down on because i did not conform to the norm.
That said, though, having propagated my own tribe I have had the chance to be a part of a group that understands how weird I am and accepts me for that so I take that as a major blessing.
As far as the Native Americans land loss, I have some insight on that. I lived in Tulsa for 20 plus years which was the end of the Trail of Tears. There is a rich Native American history in that part of Oklahoma, especially with the Cherokee tribe. My best friend was half Cherokee because her mother was half and her dad was half, which made her half. She was on the rolls and because of that she had her college education paid for. She had lots of stories growing up in both worlds.
One thing I learned, over the years, historically speaking, was that there has never been a perfect time in human history. Someone is always taking things away from someone else. My heritage is mixed and includes English, Scottish, Cherokee and Black Irish. Many, if not all, of my ancestors had to fight tooth and nail to keep what they had. Most lost. For me, it's about the struggle of the human condition from the very beginning, to rise and fall and rise again. My friend, who is now a retired school teacher, was always proud of her heritage but she never felt as though someone owed her something. She rose and moved on with her life.
I hope you have a lovely day in whatever way is perfect for you.
I have Native American relatives from Chicago who invited me to pow wows as a teenager and I got involved with them politically. Their father is my cousin,and his wife was born on a reservation in Wisconsin and went back there after they divorced. They are Chipawaw. There are a lot of differences among tribes, when I was in Montana, the Flatfeet tribes had reservations near my house, the govt gave them control of the water, bur not the land to continue the power struggle) Here in New Mexico the history is very complicated, with some tribes aligning with Mexicans, others with Spanish settlers or Americans. But more recently many Indians have been damaged by radiation from nuclear blasts (Trinity) or uranium mining in the Grants,N. M area and have not been properly compensated. Gold mining on Navaho lands by international corporations was what I was thinking about, regarding plundering but didb't want to elaborate on. My concern is the continued cartoon characterization of Indians in feathred head dress and fringed buckskins having turkey, corn , cranberry sauce and pie with Pilgrims. It is all a big fantasy. Life is not fair and for the most part Indians have been cheated, tricked and divested of their lands and culture (plentiful buffalo were almost exterminated so cowboys could run cattle and Indians not have a food source)
A proper rememberance of Thanksgiving would be honoring the buffalo ( who were sacrifriced about 150 years ago instead of a turkey dinner perhaps conducted 400 years ago. History taught in schools is highly inaccurate and to some degree mythological. If I were to do a Thanksgiving dinner ever again I would start by asking forgiveness to the peoples whose lands we took over. They continue to be victimized with drugs ,( I have heard drug cartels find reservations attractive) they were given plenty of the covid jabs& subjected to lots of covid propaganda. I know because I signed up for info on national pow wows and everything was about getting grandma and junior shot up when you went to pow wows.
We all really need to pray that Biden does not drag us into nuclear conflict with Russia because no one has had the guts to remove this dangerous idiot and stop his acts of treason
This topic is so deep and wide I don't even know how to keep my words under 10,000. The best I can do is truncate my perspective into generalizations. First, I am a naturalist. I am totally against what so called environmentalists are doing to our world. Seems quite Biblical - a third of the land, third of the seas, third of the forests, third of the animals destroyed - and still they did not repent. (Revelation 8)
I am also a rogue historian who digs into what I always see as history skimmed over. It is quite natural for humans to smooth over the tough stuff to let the memory of a time or incident be more inspiring. I have no idea what really happened at the first 'Thanksgiving' but the tradition we (my family) keep is not a reverent recall of a moment in time elevated to a holiday. Pilgrims, Indians, fellowship over a meal is quaint but doesn't really matter to me. We gather to be grateful for our blessings.
Second, no one knows better than a digger historian how outrageous some have been treated in the last 250 plus years. I so get it. Read the book Code Talkers and you will get a dose of how Native American children were treated in government and religion based schools. I know what suffering happened on the trail of tears to a well established people who lived quite civilly but who owned property that others wanted.
I know what happened during the Dustbowl years, to the once prosperous wheat farmers in Oklahoma, dubbed 'Okies' and vilified as scum when they finally gave up and migrated to California. Bad people in power, otherwise known as government is always at the root of human suffering. Somebody rose to their level of incompetence and decided how others should live and be treated.
Seems like a familiar theme doesn't it? It's how satan keeps us at war with each other. I have no solutions other than prayer. So long as evil people are allowed to be in power, the rest of us will/must suffer. I choose to hide in the light of Christ where satan can't see me.
The spirit of the holiday is what matters-- I have had friends who found Thanksgiving most meaningful when they donated their time to serve the honeless and poor at free community Thanksgiving. meals. I guess I got radicalized early-- a close friend who is Chicano went to support the Lakota during the armed Wounded Knee standoff in the 1970s, and I just learned that Native American activist Leonard Peilter who has been imprisoned for decades is still alive and incarcerated-- our government has a real problem with Indians-- My Chicano friend and I were both at the anti war demonstrations in Chicago in 1968 ( years before we met) He was 15 and had a long black ponytail. The police grabbed him & took him to a large warehouse where he was hung upside down.He was not alone. That is a form of torture -- he was never charged with a crime but the Chicago cops earned their reputation of being called pigs for a reason. He still has symptoms of post rraumatic stress.
I don't discuss ny beliefs with anyone these days, my husband died over twenty years ago so it is much easier for me to be a non-observer. 🙏 when it comes to Thanksgiving. However the US has a lot of unfinished karma in this department and should own up to their role. Sorry I had to burden you, you have made the holiday much more meaningful than most. Blessings and thanks for sharing ..
You did not burden me in the least. I'm pretty sure we could do a lengthy chat over coffee. I have learned so much in the last fifty years. You know today is the 61 anniversary of JFKs assassination. I was a junior in high school. Only full blown dementia could ever erase that day from my memory. Plus I have a photo of my face that was taken the second the office switched on the intercom and a reporter was screaming 'the president's been shot! the president's been shot!'. That photo ended up in the year book. And just think - 61 years later with sooooo much proof who did do it, they are still hiding the documents. Why? Well, I guess because they can't afford for the truth to come out because the house of cards might fall.
I was 16 on my way to English class and the news broke as we climbed the steps to our second floor classrooms-- everyone was sobbing. In class our teacher, an older chap with gray hair probably in his 50's tried to calm us down.All of us loved Kennedy. It was one of the most emotional times of our lives..
Meanwhile I researched Leonard Pelter's case--he was convicted of the murder of two FBI agents ar the Pine Ridge Reservation in June, 1975-- based upon rather shoddy evidence-- a couple of bullet casings ( which could have been planted) this year a bipartisan group of senators pleaded for the Attorney General to release him due to his ill health and evidence showing the trial was suspect-- he was first recommended to be up for parole back in 1993.
Sometimes people become symbols and their existence as liiving humans is ignored.
I just wanted to mention that I have raised turkeys, both domestic and wild. The wild turkeys are tough and skinny and rather gamey. I don't think they would have made such great eating for a "feast." I found turkeys to be incredibly stupid fowl-- my chickens & ducks were far smarter. Perhaps venison was the featured dish 400 years ago? It's a lot easier to dress a deer than pluck a turkey BTW.🙄😏
I'm going to be out of pocket for a bit - but I have thoughts! Don't even get me started on nuke plants! And raping the earth! LOL
Interesting perspective. I shall mull that over. I appreciate how it is written also.