Cruel holiday doesn't deserve thanks

Royce DrakeGuest Columnist

In a week, students will be traveling home for Thanksgiving. Simultaneously, many people from around the country will go to Plymouth, Mass. to protest a holiday that celebrates the genocide commited by religious fanatics. Although the majority of Americans celebrate the fourth Thursday of November as Thanksgiving, some people with traditionally silenced voices instead observe a National Day of Mourning.

The Thanksgiving myth is deeply ingrained in the collective psyche of this nation. We are told from a young age that the pilgrims came to the New World to gain religious freedom. According to the myth, these friendly pilgrims were saved by the equally friendly Indians who gave them food and taught them how to survive the harsh New England winters. They then had a cordial feast in which Indians and pilgrims shared the harvest, thus giving birth to the celebration we now know as Thanksgiving.

This account of the beginnings of Plymouth colony is patently false. It ignores both the genocide experienced by the indigenous people and the true nature of the pilgrims themselves. The pilgrims didn’t come to the Americas in search of religious freedom, as they had already found that in Holland. To the contrary, they were searching for the land that God was supposed to provide them so that they could become wealthy. These pilgrims were closer to colonialist-mercantilists than the religious exiles the myths make them out to be.

The indigenous people in the Thanksgiving myth are even less realistic than the mythologized pilgrims. Indigenous peoples in the region had already come into contact with European fishermen and slavers. They were not excited when a settlement of disease-ridden white people arrived nearby; rather, they were wary of these settlers. European diseases soon annihilated many of the indigineous people, and the other Indians were burned at the stake like witches or sold into slavery.

It was the history of this genocide that Wamsutta, a Aquinnah Wampanoag man, was to deliver at the 350th anniversary of the landing at Plymouth Rock. However, when he gave a copy of his speech to event officials, they prohibited him from delivering it. Hence, on the fourth Thursday of November, 1970, the first National Day of Mourning was held.

Vassar should play a role in acknowledging and legitimizing the marginalized voices and recognizing the genocide carried out against them. In my opinion, Vassar is especially suited to such a task. After all, there is a chunk of Plymouth Rock on the face of New England Building. This is ironic considering that the building is home to the Latin American and Latino/a Studies Department, the Africana Studies Department and the Asian Studies Department, all of which study the oppresion signified by the rock. The school should use the rock to make a statement, perhaps through a plaque, to highlight the atrocities committed by the settlers at Plymouth and emphasize Vassar’s stance against racism and intolerance.

It is important for us as members of the Vassar community not to wait for institutional changes. We should strive to fight oppression in all its forms on campus, in the world at large and within ourselves. And so I’m hoping that next Thursday many of us will take the time to observe the National Day of Mourning and reflect both on the genocide against this nation’s original inhabitants and on the resistance they developed against colonialist expansion and racism.