Snow Wang
(This article was written with fact checking by enaep.org, the website of official Native American cultural and reconciliation programs)
Thanksgiving is often thought of as a holiday of acknowledgement, giving thanks, and goodwill. Originating on the East Coast of the United States, it is now celebrated all over our country. But the holiday doesn’t have good connotations for everyone, and for some, it can invoke historical trauma.
To understand, we must go all the way back to the first Thanksgiving. According to most narratives taught in schools, the Native Americans helped teach the pilgrims how to live in the New World. And afterwards, they would gather, feast, and give thanks. Children of both parties would laugh and play together. In reality,this narrative is whitewashed.
According to DoSomething.org, a nonprofit supporting young activists with the truth, “[b]ecause of the erasure (in other words, removal and exclusion) of Native American narratives from the histories a lot of us were taught, we’ve been left with an incomplete picture of what really happened”.
According to the Smithsonian Museum’s Article “The Myths of the Thanksgiving Story and the Lasting Damage They Imbue”, the Natives’ lives were actually devastated and destroyed by contact with Europeans. When Europeans arrived in 1620, the Native tribe that they encountered – the Wampanoags – welcomed them initially as allies against their enemy tribes. However, the Europeans turned and backstabbed them. It eventually led to the King Philip’s War fifty years later, which killed off almost all of the Wampanoags, and wiped out their language.
Massacres surrounding Thanksgiving a couple of years later have also hurt the Wampanoag people, like the Pequot Massacre in 1636, when European colonizers shot at innocent Natives, killing over 40). To this day, most people have not heard of the Pequot Massacre (Time Magazine). In the centuries that followed, various atrocities against our indigenous people were committed, including the Trail of Tears, the US residential school system (Canada also had a similar system), and state sponsored genocides. During the Trail of Tears, at least 6,000 Cherokees died from preventable and government-inflicted causes. In the residential school system in both the US and Canada, students’ long hair was cut off; they were banned from speaking their languages and practicing their religions; and many were abused physically, emotionally, and sexually. Natives were placed on reservations and could not even leave, and today indigenous people in the US are much more likely to die from eradicated diseases, like tuberculosis, due to mistreatment by our government. Indigenous and African United Statian life expectancy is lower than that of other races, andBIPOC people still have a higher rate of poverty and other struggles that those of European descent don’t experience. Natives also go missing at a higher rate than any other racial group — almost every indigenous family knows at least one female individual who’s gone missing and has never been found. During COVID-19, BIPOC children were more likely to lose someone close to them to the virus than a European child.
What can be done about all this?
We can’t go back into history and fix the wrongs, and we can’t do anything about Native Americans that have already been killed, ethnically cleansed, or whose lives have been destroyed. But for the future, it counts on the descendants of colonizers who ripped apart Native lives — today’s European people living in the US. All European people will benefit from white supremacy, and all BIPOC will be hurt. Our system still upholds white supremacy in many ways, particularly Anglo supremacy. BIPOC communities often have no voice. Europeans should improve or amend the biased systems that have been built — and educate their children about history so that we can prevent atrocities from ever happening again. Also — sponsor land acknowledgements in schools (more on that later).
Now — one step before land acknowledgements. If you’re European, you may hit back at me: Why are you asking me to apologize for my identity and my ancestor’s crimes? Well, my answer to you is that you’ve misunderstood. BIPOC people like me (I’m not indigenous but I’m still BIPOC) are not asking you to apologize for being European or for what your ancestors did. We’re asking you to help reconcile, so that your descendants will not bear the same feelings of guilt and that our descendants will no longer suffer. There are many things you can do — before you vote, read about their positions and background. Choose candidates that promote racial equality. Try voting for BIPOC candidates. Remember — just because “we’ve had an African president” doesn’t mean white supremacy isn’t a problem anymore. It still is. And also, you can educate yourself and others. The possibilities are endless, it just depends on you – to abolish the systems that have oppressed minority groups.
Now for land acknowledgements. According to NPR, a land acknowledgement is a statement recognizing the Indigenous communities that originally inhabited the place. Originating in the US, it has swept throughout the Americas — from the arctic circle of Canada down to the tips of Chile and Argentina. Remember that just saying, “My ancestors colonized this land” is not a land acknowledgement. A true land acknowledgement sounds something like these two:
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I acknowledge that I am standing on Coastal Salish land. This land has been stolen from the indigenous peoples by colonizers, ethnically cleansed, mistreated, and renamed to “Redmond”, “Woodinville”, “Bellevue”, “Seattle”, “Bothell”, and more. I acknowledge that the Salish people still exist on this land and are thriving in their homeland. We must work harder for reconciliation and continued acknowledgement that the Salish people will have a connection to this land — yesterday, today, tomorrow, forever.
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I acknowledge that I am standing on Kurdish territory. This land has been stolen from the indigenous Kurdish people by colonizers who abused, mistreated, and murdered Indigenous people, and renamed to Iraq, Baghdad, Mosul, Samarra, Hillah, and more. As an Arab, I acknowledge that the Kurds still exist on the land near the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, where they thrived yesterday, today, and forever. We must continue to acknowledge this and continue to work for reconciliation and recognition of the Kurdish people and other indigenous peoples of the Middle East. – An Arab Iraqi boy.
Land acknowledgements do not sound like this:
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Yes, China did colonize East Turkestan, but Japanese colonialism of China was worse. – A Han Chinese boy (comparing their trauma to your trauma)
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Yes, we Europeans did colonize the Americas. It was horrible. -A European Canadian girl (not acknowledging whose land you’re actually on)
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Yes, Saami land was colonized. -A Finnish boy (not acknowledging who colonized the land, particularly if it was your people)
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Yes, we colonized what is now Angola, but European colonialism was worse. -A Kongolese girl (distracting focus with something else)
You may be asking, can I give land acknowledgement if I’m not European? Short answer: yes. If you’re not indigenous to any area, you should give land acknowledgements. It shows that you care about the land and its original inhabitants, who value the land — and that you oppose harm. Remember, as I said before that all Europeans will benefit from white supremacy, all non-indigenous people in any area will benefit from a lack of acknowledgement — regardless if they’re European, African, Asian, or Middle Eastern. Even though I am Asian, not European, I still give land acknowledgements for US soil — because it doesn’t belong to me or my people. It belongs to the Native Americans.
Now, you may have read some of the example acknowledgements and realized that not all of them center on indigenous Americans. Kurds? Uyghurs? Saami? Ngolans? While acknowledgements have origin in the Americas, they can apply to any continent.
Non-Europeans can also be imperialist. I am ethnically Han, the largest ethnic group in China. The Han Chinese colonized most areas in what we now call “China”. The Manchu, the Hui, the Ping, the Ming, the Liao, and many other ethnic groups were negatively impacted by our colonialism. Tibetans, Inner-Mongolians, and Uyghurs are facing active genocide right now.
Here is my land acknowledgement for China:
I, Snow, am Han Chinese. I acknowledge that my people colonized the ancient ancestral homelands of the Hakka, Minnan, Cantonese, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Inner Mongolians, Manchu, Wu, and many other ethnic groups. I acknowledge that my people committed many atrocities, genocides, and ethnic cleansings of minority groups in what we now call “China”. These people have an endless connection to their land, yesterday, today, and forever. I will commit to learning and acknowledging the lives and experiences of indigenous peoples, so we can continue to make life better for them and work towards reconciliation.
In conclusion, anyone can be a colonizer and anyone can be a victim. All colonialism is terrible , and indigenous peoples are hurt in unimaginable ways. All European people benefit from white supremacy and all BIPOC are hurt by white supremacy. We must work hard, educate ourselves and each other, destroy all oppressive systems, and work towards reconciliation.