I kind of hate Thanksgiving for being a symbol of colonization and binge eating. I mean, not to rain on the parade. Maybe I should have waited until next week or something, but it's relevant to a lot of people today, so excuse my angst.
Colonization sucks. I wish I could be a bit more eloquent about it but anger makes it hard to elaborate. John mentioned something in his FIFA video regarding Amsterdam about how the Dutch are very aware that their wealth is built on an a foundation of exploitation whereas (I'm going to add North) Americans do not. The fact that we* are living here means that entire cultures had to be suppressed and assimilated.
That's shitty. I think that's all I had to say. It's easy to forget all of this, or never even think about it in the first place, when the family come around and we sit around a table and smile and argue and eat amazing food. It's way easier to ignore the fact that we are making our lives on arguably stolen land. But I think we need to have it on our consciousness everyday--especially days like Thanksgiving and that one named after (that shithead) Columbus.
So there. I said it. Thanksgiving, as beautiful as the idea of giving thanks is, makes me angry. Resume the pie eating and merry making.
*and by we, I mean European settlers.
1 comment:
I think I really like the idea of Thanksgiving as a kind of secular, national, happy holiday, but maybe it would be better if we could just have a Thanksgiving that is a holiday for the sake of being a holiday and not have all this "and the Pilgrims and Native Americans were BEST FRIENDS" story crap. 'Cause, I mean, it would be great if it were true, but it conveniently leaves out the part where the European settlers then accidentally and not-accidentally killed most of said Native Americans and forced them off their land and were just generally awful.
I don't know how I feel about it, really. I mean, I definitely like it as a holiday, but to me it's just a fall holiday, not anything historical... but I don't think that it's really possible to separate it from its history... so I don't know. Good point about the Dutch though. I deeply regret the treatment of Native Americans, but (ignoring my theoretical opposition to time travel) would I rather that we go back in time and have the Europeans leave the Native Americans alone and have the U.S. (and Canada) never come into existence as large countries? I can't honestly say I would want that to happen. So does that mean that I'm not really sorry? I don't know.
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