Most people do not know the real history of Thanksgiving, and I don't begrudge you that completely. We are simply not taught what really happened during the course of our education. Last year, I wrote an article about the real History of Thanksgiving. I suggest you check it out.
As part of one of my classes this week, we learned more things about the real history of Thanksgiving that I didn't cover in the article last year. What I learned mostly pertained to the "original" US Thanksgiving, which is the one ours is modeled after. Nevertheless, I learned some things I hadn't learned before. We also watched a clip from The Addams Family Values. You can check it out below.
Perhaps the most interesting thing I learned was about the Haudenoshonee Thanksgiving Address, also known as Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen, or "words that come before all else". This ceremony is important to the Haudenoshonee peoples and is a means of thanking the natural world for all of the things it provides. Traditionally, the address can go on for days at a time, and is recited in one of the six Haudenoshonee languages. You can find out more information about Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen here and read a short summation of it in English here.
Thanksgiving and/or Columbus Day also happens to be a day of protest for Indigenous persons, which I mentioned briefly last year. This year will be the twelfth annual papal bulls burning, where copies of the May 4th 1493 Papal Bull "Inter Caetera"; the document that allowed colonizers divine rule over North America. The Papal Bull basically stated that only Christians had rights to the land, and since the continent was inhabited by heathens their rights were revoked as possessors of the land. The myth of terra nuellis followed and also "allowed" Europeans their claim to North America.
I firmly believe, and have for some time, that we should all be giving thanks every day, instead of once a year.
Program: BA (Hons) CSCT and Anthropology, BA (Hons) English & Indigenous Studies
Year: Alumni
Residence: Whidden
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Its got to have something to do with when the "first Thanksgiving was held with the Indians"...which of course never really occurred. Ours if modeled after the US one, but celebrated differently...I think it has something to do with when ours was formally created in the 19th century....
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McMaster Combined Honours Cultural Studies & Critical Theory and Anthropology: 2008
McMaster Honours English with a minor in Indigenous Studies: 2010
Carleton University Masters of Arts in Canadian Studies: 2012 (expected)
We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed in universities, looking uncomfortably into the world we inherit. -- Port Huron Statement
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