American Thanksgiving: A Holiday Whose Origins Are Rooted In Genocide, Racism and Oppression

Updated: December 11, 2013   9:45 AM

Americans are celebrating Thanksgiving today and on Facebook I noticed several of my friends wishing their American friends a "happy thanksgiving".   It's common for many to send good wishes on a public holiday.  However, if Americans and others knew the true origins of Thanksgiving in the United States then they wouldn't be so quick to send out good wishes on this day.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans have bought into the propaganda that has been fed to them since childhood by schools, the media and politicians about the supposedly benign nature of Thanksgiving.  What they are ignorant to is the fact that the origins of this holiday are drenched in the blood of the first nations people of the U.S.  So by celebrating this day as Americans do they celebrate a history of centuries of genocidal policies which began when the first Europeans settled in the American colonies and which almost led to the extinction of the indigenous peoples in what became the United States.

To get a true understanding of the origins of this holiday and why it shouldn't be celebrated as it is people need to do their research and then decide whether they want to be part of a "celebration" rooted in persecution, mass murder and racial hatred.

For example, few American know that the settlers and the Native Americans who are referred to in the American Thanksgiving myth were in fact not friends.  The peace between them was fragile and the settlers saw the natives as uncivilized and satanic.  That uneasy peace came to a horrific end when one morning in the early dawn hours around the date of Thanksgiving the settlers raided the village of the Pequot tribe and shot, clubbed and burned alive more than 700 native men, women and children.

In later years, other more insidious methods were used to clear the land of the natives including handing out blankets to the natives that were laced with smallpox.  The natives, having no immunity to the smallpox virus, were almost wiped out with death rates of nearly 90%.

The vast majority of Americans may be celebrating this holiday but in native American communities across the U.S. this day is being remembered as a day of mourning for how it initiated the conquest and destruction of America's first peoples.   If Americans continue to “celebrate” this holiday in years to come then they need to be made aware of its history, and acknowledge it publicly.To do otherwise not only perpetuates the propaganda that has been fed to the American people since childhood, but also grossly insults the memory of the millions of Native Americans who died defending their lands against those who sought to wipe out the original inhabitants of America.

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"Gathered in this place of meeting, they were attacked by mercenaries and English and Dutch. The Indians were ordered from the building and as they came forth were shot down, The rest were burned alive in the building. The very next day the governor declared a Thanksgiving Day. For the next 100 years, every Thanksgiving Day ordained by a Governor was in honor of the bloody victory, thanking God that the battle had been won."

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"The colonists were contemptuous of the Indians, who they regarded as uncivilized and satanic heathens, and the fragile early peace between Native Americans and the early settlers would soon unravel in a horrific manner in what is now Mystic Connecticut, where the Pequot tribe was celebrating their own Thanksgiving, the green corn festival. In the predawn hours, settlers -- not the Pilgrims, but a band of Puritans -- descended on their village and shot, clubbed and burned alive over 700 native men, woman and children." 

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