Reflections on the Thanksgiving Myth: Indigenous Activists and the Call for Food Sovereignty

Indigenous activist at the National Day of Mourning in Plymouth, Massachusetts

For many Americans, the Thanksgiving experience is one deeply ingrained in family dinners, children’s books, and elementary school plays, where miniature versions of Pilgrims and Indians depict a respectful encounter and shared meal. The narrative usually ends there, the supporting cast of friendly Indians to exit stage left while the Pilgrims show off newfound agricultural skills and resilience in a new land. To say this narrative leaves out important details is an understatement — not only does it fail to acknowledge the culture and history of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe (the Indigenous peoples native to the area of Plymouth, MA), it paints a picture of trust between two groups of people without alluding to the betrayal and violence perpetrated by the colonists in the hundreds of years following. In a recent New York Times article, Linda Coombs, a Wampanoag historian, remarks on the perpetuated inaccuracy of the Thanksgiving ideal: “There was an event that happened in 1621, but the whole story about what occurred on that first Thanksgiving was a myth created to make white people feel comfortable.”

To fully deconstruct this myth, some history must be revisited. The Wampanoag people had been dealing with European voyagers on and off every year since 1602, years before the famed 1621 feast. Early European explorers had captured and enslaved Native people, bringing many back to Europe or Africa in the slave trade. English-speaking members of the Mashpee Wampanoag likely had extensive previous contact with these voyagers — that is to say, they knew the dangers the presence of Europeans brought. When the Mayflower arrived, the Wampanoag chief was facing violent dilemmas with a rival tribe to the west — the Narragansett — and envisioned trading with the English for military supplies, although many of the Mashpee were wary of the presence of Europeans due to the previous interactions. However, partially out of necessity and partially out of pity for a clearly suffering establishment of colonists, the Mashpee extended a helping hand. This is what leads to the “Thanksgiving feast,” an exchange of food and military supplies. Turkey might not even have been present, as there is only mention of “fowl” in historical accounts. The meal itself was not considered particularly noteworthy until the 19th century, when President Lincoln established a national holiday in an attempt to unite Americans in the midst of the Civil War. 

The inaccuracies of the Thanksgiving celebration story are not isolated to 1621. Allen Salway, a Diné, Oglala Lakota, Tohono O'odham student, writer and community organizer from the Navajo Nation, published an op-ed in Paper magazine detailing what celebrations of “Thanksgiving” looked like in the years following: “In 1637, the Pequot Massacre took place, when over 700 Indigenous men, women and children were slaughtered in what is now known as Mystic, Connecticut. The following day, the governor declared a day of thanksgiving and held a feast to celebrate their victories in battle. Thirty-nine years later, in Massachusetts, the colonists declared a ‘day of public celebration and thanksgiving’ saying, ‘there now scarce remains a name or family of them [Natives] but are either slain, captivated or fled,’ right after the slaughtering of a tribe including the beheading of Wampanoag chief Metacom.” The ideal of friendship that so many associate with the Thanksgiving story was temporary at best — if even present at all. 

This year, amid a COVID pandemic that is disproportionately affecting Native communities and larger conversations about racial justice due in part to the Black Lives Matter movement, Indigenous activists hope that current events will encourage non-Native people to think even more critically about the meaning behind Thanksgiving and the systemic oppression faced by Indigenous peoples for hundreds of years. November is national Native American Heritage Month, and the day after Thanksgiving was deemed Native American Heritage Day in 2009. However, many Indigenous activists see this as a symbolic display of support that ultimately does nothing to address the real issue of perpetuating the Thanksgiving myth. Drawing inspiration from the renaming of Columbus Day as Indigenous People’s Day in fourteen states across the U.S., calls for alternative celebrations to Thanksgiving and pushes to reform the one-dimensional Thanksgiving narrative of friendship between “pilgrims and Indians” are gaining traction in more mainstream circles. 

Christine Nobiss, of the Plains Cree/Saulteaux George Gordon First Nation, writes that Thanksgiving’s prominent position in American society makes it particularly difficult for alternate celebrations and protests to widely catch on. However, she persists: “To celebrate the current Thanksgiving mythology is to celebrate the act of land expansion through ethnic cleansing and slavery — most of which happened at the point of a gun.” In 2018, she co-organized Truthsgiving instead, an event involving musical acts, speakers, and social and environmental activist organizations, all centered around Indigenous resistance and broadening awareness of the day’s authentic history. Other protests occur around the country as well. In the Bay Area, a Sunrise ceremony is held on Alcatraz island to honor the 1969-1971 occupation of the island by over one hundred Indigenous activists, many of them students. On the east coast, the Wampanoag people gather for a National Day of Mourning, declared in 1970. Education becomes essential to changing the conversation: “An essential part of decolonizing Thanksgiving is to start educating our children with the authentic history of this country, ” writes Nobiss. “Considering that much of the Thanksgiving mythology is based on sharing food, it is ideal to discuss the importance of Indigenous first foods or food sovereignty.”

This theme of food sovereignty is discussed often, especially amongst Indigenous activists — but what exactly is it? Food sovereignty was first defined by La Via Campesina, an international group of peasant and small-scale farmers who sought to defend their rights to land and seeds against neoliberalism and the consolidation of multinational agribusiness. The idea of food sovereignty has grown out of criticism of the food security movement — one that focuses more on simply assuaging those demanding food rather than addressing who is supplying that food. Food sovereignty, in comparison, seeks to democratize food production, distribution, and consumption and to shift the focus from the right to access food to the right to produce it. Linda Black Elk, a Board member of Seeding Sovereignty, further delineates the difference between food security and food sovereignty in a recent Zoom discussion: “It’s more than just calories… [food sovereignty] is being able to feed yourself amazing food, traditional foods, foods that will nourish you not just physically — not just give you calories — but emotionally, spiritually, and mentally as well.” For many Indigenous peoples, food sovereignty refers not just to control over food, but to a larger movement founded in land-based and ancestral connections known as rematriation. Cultural restoration is particularly important in Indigenous food sovereignty, as re-connecting to traditional tribal lands enables the practice of cultural food production.

Many methods of food production found in agroecology have their roots in traditional Indigenous practices. One of the key ideas behind agroecological practices is the importance of biological diversity in crop production, specifically in turning away from the harmful practices of monoculture that are prevalent throughout industrialized agriculture and pivoting instead towards a more holistic approach to growing food — engaging all aspects of an ecosystem. Biodiversity has been stewarded and cultivated in traditional Indigenous agricultural production for hundreds of years, and Indigenous peoples protect 80% of global biodiversity. One such example of diverse crop production is the model of the “three sisters” — corn, beans, and squash. In her book, Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer discusses how these crops are traditionally grown together: bean vines attach themselves to tall corn stalks to reach new heights, and bristly squash leaves grow low to the ground to protect the other plants from pests. In this model, growing together proves more harmonious and productive than growing apart. 

Food sovereignty is not solely applicable to agricultural crops. This year, Robert Magnan led members of the Sioux and Assiniboine tribes in a ceremonial buffalo hunt on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana to remember the purposeful killing of buffalo by the U.S. government as part of their efforts to strip Native tribes of their resources. “Thanksgiving is kind of like Columbus Day for Native people,” he says. “Why would we celebrate people who tried to destroy us?” For the past twenty years, Magnan has led efforts to restore buffalo to tribal lands across the U.S. and Canada as part of the movement for Native food sovereignty. In the years since the Intertribal Bison Cooperative signed a conservation agreement with the National Wildlife Federation, over 250 buffalo have been returned to tribal lands. 

On a day when many families celebrate an abundance of food, there is a cruel irony in the fact that many Native tribes face struggles with access to and control over healthy, traditional, and culturally relevant foods. Hundreds of years of attempts to separate tribal nations from their land and ancestral foodways have left communities vulnerable to public health inequalities. The Navajo Nation is one of the hardest hit areas in the United States by the coronavirus, with a higher death rate than any U.S. state except New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Daily cases have reached new peaks these past two weeks — the days before and after many families across America gathered to give thanks for food and abundance. With lack of food sovereignty comes a multitude of health issues. For example, Indigenous people are at a higher risk of diabetes than any other U.S. racial group. 25% of American Indian/Alaska Native households receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. The Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) sends boxes of food to low-income Native American households who do not have easy access to grocery stores where they can use food stamps. However, the food is notoriously unhealthy: processed, high carb, high sodium, and often canned food that is largely responsible for the increase in metabolic disorders. The lack of fresh and traditional food has prompted many Indigenous families to start community gardens and other food sovereignty projects. 

The mistreatment and violence perpetrated against Native American tribes and individuals is not a thing of the past, nor is it relegated to the months of October and November. To this day, the Wampanoag continue to face threats to their land and their sovereignty. After finally being federally recognized in 2007, the tribe was granted a small portion of their ancestral land in a land trust just in 2016, under the Obama administration. However, in 2018, Trump attempted to revoke the tribe’s federal status, meaning they would no longer be able to operate as a sovereign nation. Although the ruling was reversed in late June thanks to a Mashpee court challenge, their federal status is currently in debate. The House of Representatives has passed a bill reaffirming the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s sovereignty, but it has yet to be passed by the Senate. This past August, the Department of the Interior appealed the district court’s June reversal of the initial ruling, still fighting to strip the Mashpee Wampanoag of their land.

Although Thanksgiving has passed, it becomes essential to reflect and think critically year round about issues of Indigenous sovereignty and colonial violence. Find out whose land you or your family live on with this interactive map of the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. UC Berkeley sits on the territory of xučyun (Huichin (Hoo-Choon), the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo (Cho-chen-yo) speaking Ohlone people, the successors of the historic and sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County. Discuss and encourage family members or friends to sign on to this petition encouraging President-elect Joe Biden to appoint Deb Haaland as Secretary of the Interior — not only would she be the first Indigenous representative to oversee the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which operates within the Department, she would also be the first native person to hold any cabinet position. It is also an excellent time to pay Shuumi, a land tax organized by the Sogorea Te Land Trust for residents of occupied Ohlone lands in the East Bay. UC Berkeley’s Native American Student Development Center offers many educational resources to take advantage of: Native books, podcasts, articles, and movies; a list of Native owned businesses to buy from; and resources for native students. Additionally, Cultural Survival, an Indigenous advocacy group, has compiled recommended ways to honor Thanksgiving in a culturally sensitive and appropriate manner. As we reflect at the end of a break dedicated to this “holiday,” we owe our support to the multitudes of Indigenous writers, speakers, teachers, and activists who have been doing this work for years and continue to uplift the voices of ongoing Native resistance and resilience.