Sunday 21 November 2010

A Few Thoughts on Thanksgiving.

Here in Britain we have no such holiday, so this post refers to the American Thanksgiving.

Does it ever occur to you that Thanksgiving in the United States, has its roots in a group of illegal immigrants who, ill prepared for the country in which they settled, survived only because of the welfare and assistance freely given by the very people they later disposessed, given out of stores to which the immigrants themselves had never contributed.

Even that first thanksgiving was possible in part because Chief Massasoit's men hunted down five bucks to be roasted.

So, America, stop for a moment and ask yourself, what, today, would be your treatment of those illegal settlers from Plymouth?

13 comments:

  1. You're absolutely right (as usual)

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  2. Great thoughts!
    The Yanks have of course been taking that attitude abroad since they wiped out the Indians.

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  3. Well, its more of a musing than a political attack. It just occurred to me the first year, they'd probably all have died, were it not for the help they received from the people they called "savages".
    The Plymouth lot were, if what I've read is to be believed, incredibly naive and unprepared to be settlers.
    They were clueless.
    The indians could have just watched them die, but they showed charity, -and the settlers still thought of them as savages.

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  4. Being 1/32nd Cherokee Indian, I can say some natives went native and mixed. We can point fingers at small pox being a deadly present from the old world. Displacement was a cruel blow. Alcohol and gambling, our pathos. And so it goes ...on thanksgiving, I give thanks to my true Heinz 57 genetic heritage. And am grateful I have a day off to enjoy my true blessings: my kids. Every day should be a celebration of thanks.
    xxx

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  5. RDG, just which bit of you is that one thirty-second part?

    As revenge for the smallpox, native americans gave us tobacco, and, unlike smallpox, it's not only not yet eradicated, but is still being exported.

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  6. ummmmm, last news from WHO, smallpox is not eradicated worldwide, and the white man was smoking long before tobacco was exported ... xxx

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  7. Our Canadian Thanksgiving is on a different day (the 2nd Monday of October) and started in 1578 by a guy who was REALLY glad to come home.

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  8. that's why i hate holidays. it's just a load of shite for runaway consumerism. i recently had a beer with a guy who insisted that the US hadn't systematically dispossessed and all but eradicated the natives. his whole line of crap hinged on some 19th century definition of civilization (oh, he was a history teacher for many years) that basically stipulated 5 requirements for civilization, none of which the natives had... unless of course, you actually define the important words in the each of the 5 requirements. to add insult to injury, when i disagreed, he would interrupt and start a new dissertation with the following preamble... "oh, yes, i used to have that argument with my students all the time and what i would tell them is..." suffice to say, the plymouth lot were clueless and so too their progeny.

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  9. Eeeep. That is what is moulding the minds of today, eh?
    Not sure about the rights of First Nations in the US, but the Canadian government is slooooowly taking responsibility for what they did.
    I don't blame the holidays, I blame the people who claim they do things in "god's name".
    There is still no separation of church and state, despite what people say.

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  10. RDG, unless you can show evidence to the contrary, I'll continue to believe that smallpox's last confirmed case was thirty years ago. The WHO celebrated that anniversary last may.
    The last confirmed case of naturally occurring smallpox was in 1977.
    The last death from smallpox was of a lab worker in england who contracted it due to lax procedures in the lab a floor below the one where she worked. Her mother contacted the disease too but survived, her father died of a heart battack whilst visiting his dying daughter in hospital.
    The head of the lab was overcome by guilt at his part in this tragedy, that he committed suicide.

    On smoking... i don't know if europeans did smoke anything before they encountered tobacco leaves in virginia, if so, what? No, I'll stick with the version I grew up with. It scares me to think my ancestors might have been smoking turnip-peel or some other perverted vapour.

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  11. More on the pox. Officially, it now exists in only two places. CDC in Atlanta, and Koltsovo in Russia. Hmmm. And no other country has a bioweapons lab with a secret stash?

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  12. Jim. It was the "civilised" guys who deliberately gave blankets that smallpox sufferes had died on to the Indians at Fort Pitt, in the hope that the disease would ravage their villages.

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  13. Torrlop32, The Canadian Govt, the same one that's behind the further exploitation of tar sands, and all their environmental bounty?

    As for Church and State, it's always the trump card "well, god told me to do it!"

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