Appropriation of Racial Indignity and Thanksgiving

 Over a red ale on a patio with my dogs, one of my self-identified social justice friends began to rally against Thanksgiving, she looked at me for support. Of course, I was supposed to agree with her, at least she thought, that Thanksgiving is a terrible holiday and all indigenous peoples should agree. As so often during conversations over the past two years where a friend suffering white guilt discusses indigenous issues, I tune out. I’ve stopped trying to educate them, I’ve stopped trying to explain that indigenous peoples are diverse as is are thinking. Why should it be my role once again to teach them? These friends feel more than entitled to their opinions having watched a tv show or two about indigenous life and read a few blogs. Some of them have even visited reservations- oh my. 

I used to love the fact that no matter how misinformed folks were, they were interested in indigenous perspectives and culture, but lately, I’ve been feeling fatigued by it. From Columbus Day to Thanksgiving, I encounter this appropriation of racial indignity. Surely, one voice of one indigenous person denounced these holidays and so we must get rid of them and all of us indigenous folks can only truly be indigenous if we agree. Once again, a white person out of guilt (think our lovely Supreme Court precedent on domestic dependent nations) is characterizing what it means to be indigenous. My grandfather was clearly not indigenous under the white men’s stereotype of his time because he did not wear a headdress and skirt and instead open for an army uniform and later a cowboy hat. And I’m not indigenous because I don’t rally against Columbus or Thanksgiving. I will be the first to admit that it can be difficult to define who is indigenous using specific criteria. The whole notion of the legal status of “American Indian” can be quite problematic because of how the census was taken and the stigma at the time of self-identifying as indigenous (my family is not on the Dawes Rolls because they in some instances left race blank and in other instances, scratched out whatever race they had written- an affirmative act of reconsidering whatever the heck they wrote). The notion of appearance is equally problematic and more of a social construct by main stream culture often adapted from Hollywood rather than a real reflection of the diversity of tribes and physical features. Am I not indigenous because my skin is white and eyes are blue even though my mother is dark-skinned and toned? What about my cheekbones? Then we have the concept of genetic markers and unless some company like ancestry.com says you are indigenous, then you couldn’t possibly be even though the genetic markers are only as good as the population submitting samples so with Navajo peoples as the largest population in the US and largest sample, if I don’t match with them as a Choctaw, I must not be indigenous. And what about where I live? If you have not experienced fourth-world poverty of a reservation, you simply can’t be indigenous according to some white people. So this whole idea of subscribing to the same political beliefs of white liberals about holidays as a marker for indigeneity is not only misguided, once again, it is paternalistic and a misappropriation of our racial identity.

Reflecting on Thanksgiving, I have never had too strong of an opinion, but today I want to pause on the outlash. My family did not grow up celebrating Thanksgiving regularly, for various reasons. I don’t think I had my first turkey dinner until I was a teenager. But when my family could get together, we celebrated and over the years that started happening more on Thanksgiving because it was a day that everyone had off. Family is a cornerstone for most indigenous peoples and Thanksgiving has become a vehicle to celebrate family. In law school, I organized a Thanksgiving event potluck, inviting all student groups, to bring food to celebrate their heritage and opening it to all students. We invited a representative of the Wampanoag Peoples to speak with us. Rather than designating Thanksgiving as a day of oppression, we recognized it for its positive attributes and its origins of the Wampanoag bringing food to the pilgrims and helping them survive the winter. What is not to celebrate about that? Yes, within the following years, some pilgrims massacred indigenous peoples and stole lands and forever our joint history was changed. We should not forget that, but we should not appropriate the good that was and is Thanksgiving and turn it into guilt. Let us use Thanksgiving to remember the good in humanity and spend time with families. 

Columbus Day has always been a bit more problematic for me. It was not a holiday I had until I moved to the East Coast and at that age, a day off is a day off from school. Woohoo. Why we celebrate Columbus Day is a bit of a factually incorrect fairytale. The United States wishes to observe a day for the discovery of the Americas and attributes it to Columbus (historically, this may very well have to do with appeasing Italians). Fundamentally, we know that Columbus didn’t discover the Americas, we were already here. And he wasn’t even the first white explorer to find them- should we celebrate Leif Erikkson day? And Columbus and his crewmen were certainly guilty of atrocities we would not tolerate today. There has to be specificity though for anti-Columbus because many white people simply attribute all genocide and problems for our peoples to Columbus. However, had it not been Columbus, do they really think another white explorer would not have done the same or that the manifest destiny and shaping of American would have been different? It’s so much easier to lay blame on Columbus rather than look at our society as whole and time period as a whole. Would removing Columbus Day really right hundreds of years of policies by numerous white leaders that harmed indigenous peoples? Now, Columbus was also brutal in his own right and that may be reason to no longer hero-worship him, but isn’t that different from blaming him for the ills wrought onto indigenous peoples by his mere “discovery” of the Americas. My personal opinion is rather than the white-focus on blaming Columbus, the focus should be on recognizing indigenous cultures more and observing more days of cultural significance to indigenous peoples. We can’t rewrite history, but we can tell history more accurately and write our nation’s future that is more inclusive of indigenous peoples’ and our contributions. 

All of this swelled in my head as my friends denounced the holidays. I wished to tell her that her voice is important, but more important, listen to indigenous voices. To be a true ally, don’t appropriate our indignity, our anger. Don’t assume we should think like you. Have a dialogue. Recognize that most of us stand with a foot in our ancestral history, but we also have a foot in the United States today and may enjoy the American holidays and that doesn’t make us less indigenous, but ask us why and what they mean to us. Because Thanksgiving means a time of reflection and spending time with family and friends to me.