It is not common knowledge that there were no corn, beans, squash, or chilies anywhere in Eurasia prior to 1500. It is not common knowledge that the interplanting of corn, beans, and squash is a profound example of traditional ecological knowledge that’s not only powerful in terms of soil science and plant nutrition, but also in that, when combined, those three vegetables produce a complete protein….
— from an article by chef Nephi Craig, on Native News Online, November 2021.
What are we eating today, November 23? Turkey, pumpkin, cranberries, squash, corn, potatoes… they’re all native to North America.
Earlier this week, the Daily Post gave a couple of nods to the celebration commonly known as ‘Thanksgiving Day’. On Tuesday, columnist John Tures discussed the advisability of talking politics around the table. And yesterday, humorist Louis Cannon wrote about his tentative plans to serve tuna sandwiches.
I share an older Victorian house in downtown Pagosa with my daughter Ursala Hudson, my son-in-law Chris Haas, and my granddaughters Amelie, age 13, and Simone, age 9. We haven’t celebrated ‘Thanksgiving’ for the past couple of years.
In 2021, I asked Simone — then, age 7 — to explain why our family would not be celebrating Thanksgiving.
“Well, Mamma said she doesn’t think so, because it’s, like, something for the Black people or something? Or it represents, like, bad White people? Or it represents the Earth that it used to be?
“But I don’t know. She just said, it’s stupid. And she said we shouldn’t do it, because she doesn’t think so.”
A concise, if slightly confused, explanation.
I asked Ursala to explain her reasons for setting aside this nationally-recognized celebration. Her explanation was a bit more lucid.
“About three years ago, I started questioning what the holiday… what its purpose was, in my life… and therefore, I had to question what its purpose was for our society. And I started thinking back to what we are told ‘Thanksgiving’ is; what the story is, behind Thanksgiving. I remembered that, all my life, I pictured a really amicable holiday — a lovely holiday, where there is a positive sentiment between indigenous people and non-indigenous people. And how sharing a meal amongst friends, and activities at school, would promote that idea.
“Of peace, between cultures.”
I ought to give a little context to Ursala’s comments. Ursala is the youngest of my three children, and her father (me) was descended from Europeans — English, Scottish, German.
Her late mother, Clarissa Rizal, was born in Alaska, descended from Filipino, Tlingit Indian, and German grandparents, but Clarissa identified most strongly as Alaskan Native.
Ursala likewise identifies closely with her Native American heritage, and with the history of an oppressed minority. But as recently as three years ago, she still saw Thanksgiving as symbolizing the ability of different culture to co-exist peacefully, side-by-side.
“Which is kind of ironic, because Thanksgiving is notorious for familial arguments. And that’s kind of funny.
“So three years ago, when we were at the table, I said, ‘Let’s talk about what really happened, back then.’ Because there’s this romantic story, where the Indians helped the white men survive… and that they had a lovely dinner together.”
“While that may have happened, that completely ignores everything else that was going on between the two cultures around that time. And by focusing on that romantic event, that one time during Thanksgiving… it doesn’t allow space for the real story.
“And, when do we tell the real story?”
I think she means, “the rest of the story” rather than “the real story”. I have no doubt that the meeting of cultures in North America had “real” peaceful, romantic moments. But much of the story involves “real” bloodshed, violence, and oppression.
“There were people looking for a new world, a new future, a new place where they could procreate and where their race could thrive — and there were other people, already here, who were in the way of that… So the indigenous people needed to be moved out of the way. Or exterminated… Either they were killed, or they had to ‘assimilate’…
“And a lot of times, their cultural practices involved a really strong connection to the land, which didn’t allow for things like mass extermination of animals, and logging, and laying railroad tracks, and blowing up hillsides…
“It’s pretty wild, when you think back to the first Thanksgiving, we’re taught about the Mayflower, and all of us know about the Mayflower. But do we know the name of one tribe that was there? We don’t know that. It’s not included in American History.
“Why does American History start with the Mayflower?”
Speaking as a news reporter who has written about events in Pagosa Springs for the past two decades — written from my limited perspective, and based on my particular value system — I understand a little bit about “history”.
I understand that the stories that the historians and journalists write down and preserve, reflect only a minuscule part of what ‘really’ happened in a town or region or nation. We select a few details from among millions of individual events — details that seem, to us, somehow important — and that becomes the “history” of a place.
Eventually, those stories become part of a mythology — a mythology that future generations assume to be a “real story”. Eventually, the “real story” might even become a holiday.
At the top of this page, I quoted a brief excerpt from an essay by White Mountain Apache, Nephi Craig, founder of the Native American Culinary Association, a network of Native cooks, chefs, scholars, farmers, and community members devoted to the development and preservation of Native American foodways. He writes:
Could it ever be possible that we would stop celebrating a false narrative that perpetuates cultural erasure, colonialism, and the dehumanization of the Indigenous peoples of America? Let’s take a more human look at what lessons are held in the landscapes we inhabit today.
Could we investigate further the lessons to be learned from plants and animals as we try to “cook locally” and “source sustainably,” while trying to “reduce our carbon footprint”?
Could we actually turn to Indigenous values and know that autumn is a time when life and death meet, and we plan for a new beginning in the spring? Could we accept the Indigenous value and belief that the harvest time is a sacred time of hard work, love, and respite?
It makes sense that if we are going to honor Indigenous people’s voices, then we should also honor the voices of the landscapes and the voices of the foods, and allow Indigenous peoples to reclaim and rewrite the American narrative to celebrate the fourth Thursday in November as Indigenous Foods Day…