Describe Thanksgiving Day celebration as a symbol of friendship.

In the “Prologue”to There There, Tommy Orange writes, “In 1621 colonist invited Massasoit, the chief of the Wampanoags, to a feast after a land deal. Massasoit come with ninety men. That meal is why we still eat a meal together in November. Celebrate it is as a nation. But that one wasn’t a thanksgiving meal. It was a land-deal meal. Two years later there was another, similar meal meant to symbolize eternal friendship. Two hundred Indians dropped dead that night from an unknownpoison…By the time Massasoit’s son became chief, there were no Indian-Pilgrim meals eaten together” (4).Myths like Thanksgiving as a symbolof friendship, while making history palatable for some, marks the beginning of a “five-hundred-year-old genocidal campaign” (8) for Native Americans. Such myths perpetuate the continued erasure of Native American history, tradition and culture.

AssignmentStories We Like to TellOurselves
•Thanksgiving Day celebration as a symbol of friendship. •Native Artifacts in museumsas historical objects.•Underrepresentation or absence of Native Americans in the curriculumof K-12 and higher education. •Underrepresentation or absence of Native American Faculty in K-12 and higher education.•Celebration of Columbus Day, rather than Indigenous day,by Federal, State and Local governments, business, schools, colleges and universities. •The promosition of Disney’sversion of Pocahontas as historically accurate,(she was 13 and he was in his thirties). •Continued exploitation of Native Lands for resources (i.e., Standing Rock, North Dakota). •References to Native Americans in the past tense, as a historic rather than a thriving contemporary culture. •Appropriating Native American Art, fashion, music, image (i.e., Hollywood) and ideas.•Sports mascots as a practice of honoring; “Indians were removed, then reduced to a feathered image. Our heads on flags, jerseys, and coins” (7).•Cultural amnesia: forgetting to mention Natives when honoring soldiers, inventors, statemen and women, scholars. •Sanitizing America’s origins, one without genocide, massacres and wholesale theft. •Assimilation of Native voice by Western Culture: Who does the speaking, knowing and telling. •A relevant topic of your choosing, after discussion with instructor.