Native America Calling Talks The First Thanksgiving

November 22, 2017 9:30 PM

National radio program Native America Calling shares the indigenous American peoples' stories [59m, sadly no transcription] about how Thanksgiving originated, rose up in US culture as a holiday, and what it means to them today.
posted by hippybear (6 comments total)

Thanks, hippybear!! I am looking forward to listening to this in the morning. I don't live near a station that broadcasts it anymore, so I sometimes listen online.

I want to say a few things in advance that may help discussion:

1. Native America Calling is a radio program with a primarily Native American audience, so those listeners bring contextual knowledge that the show-runners may not feel they need to provide.
2. Many, many Native American families have the usual Thanksgiving dinner just like other Americans. And it's generally treated as a day about family, food, and giving thanks, not a historical commemoration of 1621 -- same as for most of us, really.
3. So these are voices of guests whose ideas the hosts want to present to an audience of Native people, not the Official Opinion Of All Indians calling out white people for celebrating Thanksgiving.

My own feeling about T-day is that Abraham Lincoln invented it in 1864 for the purpose of giving thanks. The whole Pilgrims/Indians ret-con was a justification to make it sound less arbitrary. But it's like Festivus -- we can admit made this up, and drop the crepe paper hats and dubious legends if we want to. (And maybe we could keep the other half of Lincoln's suggestion: while thanking God for our blessings, we should also offer Him apologies "with humble penitence" for allowing slavery and war.)
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 11:19 PM on November 22, 2017 [30 favorites]

Thomas Builds-the-Fire: Man, the cowboys always win.
Victor: The cowboys don't always win.
Thomas Builds-the-Fire: Yeah they do-- The cowboys always win. Look at Tom Mix. What about John Wayne? Man, he was about the toughest cowboy of them all, innit?
Victor: You know, in all those movies, ya' never saw John Wayne's teeth? Not once. I think there's something wrong when you don't see a guy's teeth.

[taps a rhythm on his lap]

John Wayne's teeth eh-yah John Wayne's teeth heh-yah heh-yah

[in unison]

John Wayne's teeth eh-yah John Wayne's teeth
Are they false? Are they real?
Are they plastic? Are they steel?

-- Smoke Signals(1998), Sherman Alexie, Starring Gary Farmer, also the star of Powwow Highway(1989), both productions of Native American enterprise.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 11:40 PM on November 22, 2017 [11 favorites]

So these are voices of guests whose ideas the hosts want to present to an audience of Native people, not the Official Opinion Of All Indians calling out white people for celebrating Thanksgiving.

I just want to emphasize this point. When I listen to this show, I feel like I'm eavesdropping on a conversation that isn't mine to participate in. I also always learn a lot.
posted by hippybear at 8:02 AM on November 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

NYT: Most Everything You Learned About Thanksgiving Is Wrong

Relavent bits:

* Harvest feasts predated the pilgrims

* The 1621 celebration is distinct from the 1637 Pequot massacre that ended the Pequot War. I’ve personally seen sources that conflate these incidents (looking at you, Howard Zinn)
posted by chrchr at 10:19 AM on November 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

As a Canadian, the American myth of the Indigenous people and Pilgrims and the idea that there can be an "ownership" of a "thanksgiving/harvest" celebration always struck me as weird. But I guess that's the nature of myths about national identity, they don't always stand up to scrutiny and more often then not promote the advancement of one group over another. That's not to say we don't have a complicated history with our Thanksgiving celebrations which we can't seem to shake. It seems to me that idea of a celebration thankfulness and harvest is fine but the ties to settler myths and White supremacy deserve to be shelved.
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:50 PM on November 23, 2017 [4 favorites]

I'm looking forward to listening to this while I work tomorrow. Are there other good podcasts by Native Americans that I should be listening to?
posted by juliapangolin at 7:23 PM on November 23, 2017