Mixing Thanksgiving Celebrations With Respect for Indigenous Communities
Summary from the AllSides News Team
As many Americans spend their Thanksgiving eating and relaxing with loved ones, some are calling for a reconsideration of the holiday's meaning as it connects to Indigenous peoples.
How the Columnists Covered It: "Rather than see this holiday as an opportunity to gorge on a meal and dwell on naïve fantasies about a period of accord," Thanksgiving could become "an opportunity to retell the history of the United States, putting Indigenous experiences at the center instead of the periphery," wrote one Los Angeles Times columnist. "We need to be humble," said an Indigenous historian interviewed by Deseret News (Center bias). “What the story needs to be is what we can do together to remember what happened.”
How the Media Covered It: Some left-rated media voices, such as MSNBC's Joy Reid (Left bias), argued that the "myth of Thanksgiving" and the first shared meal between Pilgrims and Native Americans erases "the genocide that followed." Some right-rated outlets focused on those comments and other similar narratives, and framed them as an unjust vilification of the holiday.
Good News: It's easy to focus on divisions in your family. That's why AllSides compiled a guide to issues you may find common ground on this Thanksgiving.
Featured Coverage of this Story
From the Right
Thanksgiving vilified by media and schools as a celebration of ‘genocide,’ ‘imperialism’
This week, millions of Americans will be celebrating Thanksgiving with family and friends, eating a good meal and watching football. But a creeping vilification of the popular holiday has spread across media outlets and schools, claiming that Thanksgiving is about "genocide" and "imperialism."
The Saturday before Thanksgiving in 2021, MSNBC featured Native American activist Gyasi Ross to criticize the holiday.
"Instead of bringing stuffing and biscuits, those settlers brought genocide and violence," he said.
The year before, on the November 21, 2020 edition of "AM Joy," MSNBC regular Jason Johnson echoed a similar note.
"I...
From the Left
End the romance of Thanksgiving, as a great Pequot scholar argued two centuries ago
In November 1620 the Mayflower deposited about 100 Pilgrims at the Wampanoag community of Patuxet, which the newcomers renamed New Plymouth. A year later, the English and Wampanoags enjoyed a three-day feast. For generations, Americans have celebrated that meal as the first Thanksgiving.
As traditions go, Thanksgiving seems pretty secure, though the recent redefinition of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day suggests that even once-sacred holidays can change. Columbus trotted through American culture until 1992, the 500th anniversary of his first voyage. That year, Native and other scholars fueled a campaign...
From the Center
This Thanksgiving, Give Thanks for The Principles that Bind Us Together
Americans have been taught to identify Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims and Native Americans joining, despite their differences, for a shared feast at Plymouth Colony. The symbolic nature of this historical gathering is powerful and should never become lost on us as a nation. However, in this divided political climate, just weeks removed from a heated midterm election, the country would also be remiss to forget the reason Thanksgiving became a national holiday in the first place: to awaken a sense of America's shared history and principles during the most tense...
AllSides Picks
April 19th, 2024
April 19th, 2024
More News about Culture from the Left, Center and Right
From the Left
From the Center
From the Right
