Thanksgiving is a time to celebrate and be thankful for all the wonderful things we have and all the things we are thankful for. But is it really a holiday that should be celebrated at all? Is it time to end it?
00:02:56.440The sanitized version of Thanksgiving neglects to mention the violence, land theft, and subsequent decimation of indigenous populations.
00:03:04.460Needless to say, this causes tremendous distress to those of us who are still reeling from the trauma of these events to our communities.
00:03:11.960Thanksgiving's roots are intertwined with colonial aggression.
00:03:15.220One of the first documented Thanksgivings came in 1637,
00:03:18.740after the colonists celebrated their massacre of an entire Pequot village.
00:03:22.600I do not think we need to end Thanksgiving, but we do need to decolonize it.
00:03:29.240That means centering the indigenous perspective and challenging the colonial narratives around the holiday and every other day on the calendar.
00:03:35.980By reclaiming authentic histories and practices, decolonization seeks to honor indigenous values, identities, and knowledge.
00:03:42.740This approach is one of constructive evolution.
00:03:45.080In decolonizing Thanksgiving, we acknowledge this painful past while reimagining our lives in a more truthful manner.
00:03:53.780Now, by the way, in case this wasn't clear, that was the pro-Thanksgiving side of the debate.
00:04:18.220Give thanks to native nations who granted settlers some form of legitimacy by entering into treaties recognizing them to be in our homelands.
00:04:25.320Those treaties recognize that Americans are now under our spiritual custody and have rights to pass through our country.
00:04:31.540As soon as Americans were able to impose their will on indigenous nations, the treaties were violated.
00:04:36.960Some indigenous nations do not have treaties, and legally this means their nation should be intact.
00:04:41.260Those of us who have treaties have defensible legal claims to lands that are now occupied by private American settlers under U.S. law.
00:04:48.840November is already Native American Heritage Month.
00:04:52.000Thanksgiving could be something better.
00:04:53.760A day to appreciate the truth of a Native American history and Native Americans' contributions to our lives.
00:04:59.140Let's tell a different story by dropping the lie of Thanksgiving and begin a truthsgiving.
00:05:04.960Yes, let's tell the truth of Thanksgiving, he says.
00:05:09.100Let's tell the story that no one's ever heard before.
00:05:12.920And that's why every year around this time, there are dozens of articles and videos talking about the alleged truth that nobody is allegedly talking about.
00:05:21.660With the holidays coming up, all those dinners, all those moments around the table with family, I want to make sure every meal is special.
00:05:36.900Whether it's a holiday roast, bacon for breakfast on Christmas morning, a chicken for a nice family dinner, knowing exactly where my meat comes from gives me and my family peace of mind.
00:05:46.800Honestly, people notice the difference, too. The flavors are truly just better all around.
00:05:51.800Holidays are about bringing people together, creating memories over good food.
00:05:55.520And when you're serving America's best meat, those meals become even more meaningful.
00:05:59.420It's the kind of quality your family deserves and the kind they'll be talking about long after the holidays are over.
00:06:04.500I used to think you could only get a really great steak at like an expensive steakhouse, but Good Ranchers delivers that same quality right to my door.
00:06:11.580Now I can impress family and guests without dropping, you know, 100 bucks every time we eat out.
00:06:16.360And here's the deal. All new subscribers to any Good Ranchers box using code Walsh will get an additional $100 off your first three orders, $40 off your first, $30 off your second, $30 off your third, and free meat for life when you subscribe.
00:06:30.720So hit up GoodRanchers.com this holiday season full of delicious meals.
00:06:35.100Again, use code Walsh, GoodRanchers.com.
00:07:49.980None of that changes the basic meaning of Thanksgiving or undermines or debunks the basic central story of Thanksgiving.
00:07:57.700Besides, the old simplistic story of the holiday has now been replaced with a new simplistic story.
00:08:05.460In the new simplistic version, the Native tribes were all a bunch of peaceful tree-hugging hippies in tune with the earth and nature, singing kumbaya when they were viciously slaughtered by the white man.
00:08:17.020The pilgrims overtook the Native Americans and took everything that they had worked so hard for.
00:08:23.080The actual truth is that the Native tribes were in a constant state of war long before any white man set foot on these shores.
00:08:29.080Violence was an integral part of so-called indigenous culture, all indigenous cultures, because it was not just one culture.
00:08:35.240These were disparate tribes stretched out all over the hemisphere, and violence was an integral part of all of them, no exceptions.
00:08:45.000As for their contact with European settlers, sometimes the contact was peaceful on both sides.
00:08:50.160On some occasions, the settlers committed atrocities.
00:08:52.900On some occasions, the Indians committed atrocities.
00:08:55.540On some occasions, the atrocities on either side were basically unprovoked.
00:08:59.080On plenty of occasions, there was mutual combat between the two sides.
00:09:06.500They never acknowledge even one of the many, many, many countless instances of Indian tribes inflicting horrific, savage violence on innocent colonists, including women and children.
00:09:35.720400 years ago, almost everybody's life was brutal and tragic.
00:09:40.240If we're supposed to be sad about misfortunes suffered by people we never met way back in the distant past, then we will never stop being sad.
00:09:47.560Almost everyone everywhere suffered greatly back in those days.
00:09:51.340There are plenty of people still suffering greatly today.
00:09:53.680If you want to empathize with people's pain, maybe choose people who are currently living, not people who had decomposed in the ground 400 years ago.
00:10:01.400Not people who died 300 years before the automobile was invented.
00:10:04.840Now, in final analysis, history contains an essentially infinite amount of suffering and atrocities and outrages and injustices.
00:10:15.180It also contains heroism and sacrifice and courage and achievement.
00:10:19.600It is up to us to decide which of those things in our national history we will focus on.
00:10:26.660I contend that the healthiest category to focus on, the thing that you focus on if you want to be a thriving and happy and healthy society, is the latter.
00:10:35.520Which isn't to say that we outright deny and never discuss the former.
00:10:39.080Of course we acknowledge that bad things were done in our history.
00:10:41.740We shouldn't try to erase that from the history books, and nobody is.
00:10:45.140But ultimately, you will look back on your history with pride and gratitude or with resentment and despair.
00:10:51.500You will focus on the triumph or the tragedy.
00:10:53.860The people of all other nations across the world, or at least the non-Western world, they choose to focus on the triumph of their ancestors, which breeds national pride and patriotism and gratitude.
00:11:06.900In the modern West, we are the only ones who have decided to basically ignore all of the positive and concentrate almost exclusively on the bad.
00:11:16.400So much so that even our day of Thanksgiving has become, at least in some corners, times of mourning.