Paul Ellertson, online publishing coordinator

Some of us love that time of year when we can get together with family and friends to have turkey and what not. Some of us still invite our relatives despite political differences. However, we tend to ignore the history behind why Thanksgiving is seen as a very negative thing by many groups. 

Thanksgiving is seen by many as a colonizer’s tradition. This is accurate because if it weren’t for the colonization of Turtle Island, what we now know as America, we wouldn’t have Thanksgiving and millions of Indigenous people wouldn’t have been mercilessly slaughtered. 

During the colonization of North America especially, there were Indigenous groups that helped the settlers who were struggling to survive on land and in weather conditions they were not used to. They were failing at farming and dying. Certain Indigenous groups pitied these settlers and helped them. Unfortunately for the Indigenous groups, the settlers would just slaughter them anyway a short while later. 

Many of us forget what our ancestors did to Indigenous people that helped lead us to celebrate Thanksgiving. While it’s cool to practice gratitude and being thankful, it’s also disgusting that Thanksgiving, despite its history, has become a nationally recognized holiday. In school, we’re taught fragments about this country’s genocidal and colonial past, but when it comes to holidays like Thanksgiving, many of us forget that history. 

Instead of recognizing Thanksgiving, we should be doing so much more to not only recognize the effects of colonization, but also learn more about what we did to Indigenous people. Banning books isn’t a good start. This year especially, I’m not sure why we are taking time to celebrate since our new president-elect wants to strip Indigenous people of their rights as well as other people of color who had their dignity and humanity stripped away by the colonizer. 

I can’t talk about this more without talking about slavery as well. I’m not sure why people in 1863 thought it was a good idea to make this holiday a national holiday when many still owned slaves. Like, were these people thankful to own other humans that did their hard labor for them? Yeah, probably. Nowadays many of us fail to recognize that as well. We forget we had slavery, we forget we stole land and we forget we committed one of the largest genocides in history. 

If those of us that want to practice being thankful on Nov. 28, we need to take that day to remember how we got to the point of celebrating really dark and genocidal days in U.S. history. Personally, I’m not excited about people wishing me a happy Thanksgiving, I appreciate them thinking of me, but also no thanks to colonization.