Posted on 11/24/2005 9:15:16 PM PST by weegee
The bitter truth, as we feast on the bounty of the empire -Our myth of Thanksgiving warps a history of genocide
ONE indication of moral and intellectual progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day with a National Day of Atonement.
Indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas. But the thought of changing this white-supremacist holiday is hard to imagine, which speaks volumes about our historical hypocrisy and its relation to the contemporary politics of empire.
It's not news that all the world's great powers achieved "greatness" through brutality on a grand scale. That those same societies are hesitant to highlight this barbarism also is predictable.
In the United States, this reluctance to acknowledge our original sin — the genocide of indigenous people — is of special importance today. It's now routine — even among conservative commentators — to describe the United States as an empire, so long as everyone understands we are an inherently benevolent one. Because history contradicts that claim, history must be twisted and tortured.
One vehicle for taming history is patriotic holidays, with Thanksgiving at the heart of U.S. myth-building. We hear a story about the hearty Pilgrims, whose search for freedom took them from England to Massachusetts. There, aided by the friendly Wampanoag Indians, they survived in a harsh environment, leading to a harvest feast in 1621 after the Pilgrims' first winter.
Some aspects of the conventional story are true enough. But it's also true that by 1637 Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop was proclaiming a thanksgiving for the successful massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children, part of the long and bloody process of opening land for the English invaders. The pattern would repeat itself across the continent until between 95 percent and 99 percent of American Indians had been exterminated.
Simply put:
Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was blessed by those we hold up as our heroic Founding Fathers.
In 1783 George Washington said he preferred buying Indians' land rather than driving them off it because that was like driving "wild beasts" from the forest. He compared Indians to wolves, "both being beasts of prey, tho' they differ in shape." Thomas Jefferson — president No. 3 and author of the Declaration of Independence, which refers to Indians as the "merciless Indian Savages" — was known to romanticize Indians and their culture, but that didn't stop him in 1807 from writing to his secretary of war that in a coming conflict with certain tribes, "[W]e shall destroy all of them."
As the genocide was winding down in the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt (president No. 26) defended whites' expansion across the continent as an inevitable process "due solely to the power of the mighty civilized races which have not lost the fighting instinct, and which by their expansion are gradually bringing peace into the red wastes where the barbarian peoples of the world hold sway."
How does a country deal with the fact that some of its most revered historical figures held these views? Here's how "respectable" politicians, pundits and professors play the game:
When invoking a grand and glorious aspect of our past, then history is all-important. We are told how crucial it is for people to know history, and there is much hand-wringing about the younger generations' lack of knowledge about, and respect for, that history. But when one brings up facts and interpretations that contest the celebratory story and make people uncomfortable, suddenly the value of history drops precipitously and one is asked, "Why do you insist on dwelling on the past?"
This off-and-on engagement with history isn't of mere academic interest; as the dominant world power of the moment, U.S. elites have a clear stake in the contemporary propaganda value of that history. Obscuring bitter truths about historical crimes helps perpetuate the fantasy of U.S. benevolence, making it easier to sell contemporary imperial adventures — such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq — as another benevolent action.
History can be one of the many ways we create and impose hierarchy, or it can be part of a process of liberation. The truth won't set us free, but the telling of truth at least opens the possibility of freedom.
As Americans sit down on Thanksgiving Day to gorge themselves on the bounty of empire, many will worry about the expansive effects of overeating on their waistlines. We would be better to think about the constricting effects on the day's mythology on our minds.
Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of "The Heart of Whiteness: Race, Racism, and White Privilege and Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity." He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
We can quantify the potential threat from a spreading virus like AIDS or the bird flu.
Too few are willing to acknowledge the danger posed by mental sicknesses such as socialism, antiAmericanism, homosexuality, and general self-loathing.
What this man preaches in his idiotorials is a poison that continues to spread and infect those susceptible.
Shhh, liberals only accept that argument when a city council wants to seize private property and force the sale to another private individual.
Another crypto-nazi indigenous-pipples wannabee, like Ward "$#!##ing Bull" Churchill.
Other nuggets from Jensen:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=robertjensen
That explains why the looney liberals love the Palestinians, and hate the Jooooooooz.
No we don't you nitwit.
A few attention whores do but most of us get together with our family and eat turkey and give thanks the way the rest of the nation does.
And 90% give thanks to the Chr-stian G-d as well. So you can take your pathetic drivel fold it five ways and stick it.
PS Quit with the "indigenous people" people BS. If you must label us the proper term is AMERICAN Indian. Please note the AMERICAN comes first. But most of us prefer just to be considered human and desperately wish you would find a hobby and leave us alone.
Maybe we should ask when Jensen will start his demand of reparations for people of Sicilian heritage.
My point is that the fact that many native Americans died from contact with diseases that the European's brought with them is to note the importance that it was a fact of life and not a conspiracy. It happened, unfortunate, but it just happened. No group of Europeans set out to make that happen.
My point is that the fact that many native Americans died from contact with diseases that the European's brought with them is to note the importance that it was a fact of life and not a conspiracy. It happened, unfortunate, but it just happened. No group of Europeans set out to make that happen.
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