Exterminating natives: a 400 year tradition cemented by Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving celebrates 400 years of pillage and the destruction of a continent's indigenous people, all perpetrated in the service of European expansionism and white supremacy, according to American writer and political commentator Daniel Patrick Welch.

Welch made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Thursday when Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, an annual holiday when the Americans get out their traditional turkey and other requisite culinary treats.

Native Americans, however, commemorate the event as the National Day of Mourning for “the genocide of millions of native people, the theft of native lands and the relentless assault on native culture.”

Native Americans holding 50th annual Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving

Native Americans are holding the 50th annual Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving.

Commenting to Press TV, Welch said, “Thanksgiving is a touchy subject for anyone with a conscience in the Americas, and in Europe, I hope. Now it is the traditional start of the shopping season, a command performance of sorts for family gatherings and all that.”

“A few years ago my wife and I eschewed our family commitments to join the Natives’ gathering in Plymouth because it’s near, near to the Boston area where we live.  And the Native Americans not all of whom were not slaughtered still acknowledge it as the National Day of Mourning, and meet at Cole’s Hill to commemorate the genocide of their people,” he added.  

“And the trouble with the holiday is that the only way that you can celebrate it is to not only erase it but validate and re-engineer the history towards something positive. It’s fine to say that this is when we celebrate our national ‘togetherness.’ Or ‘It’s a family holiday.’ But it’s unconscionable to do that without studying and teaching the actual history that goes along with it. The fact is that the day itself is a remnant of civil war restorationism where Lincoln thought it would be appropriate to join the white secessionists and northerners to a new cause which is the original cause which inspired the Europeans to settle the entire continent. And that’s when actually the holiday was made official in the 1860s,” the analyst said.    

“he other thing about it is that every single element of it is a lie. Everything is a lie. And it’s important, especially if you are a teacher. You have to use alternative texts. Now it would be revisionist historians like Jim Loewen, or native or black historians who have come up with the other point of view.  But when the Europeans came to this so-called Thanksgiving, that is to say in 1620 in Plymouth, or Patuxet, they like the Europeans of that time were met with a decimated population that had been slaughtered, up to 95 percent by a smallpox epidemic which was likely engineered by an earlier journey in 1615, to the same destination in which blankets were distributed to the population--but at the very least was encouraged and celebrated by the settlers. They thought it was divine providence. This biological warfare, this genocidal rampage was God’s will. And it cleared title—John Winthrop actually used the phrase ‘cleared title’ to the land through Divine Providence,”   he pointed out.

“And they came in—there are all these towns around mysteriously named ‘field:’ Deerfield, Marshfield, Northfield… The reason these places exist is that they were existing farms. It wasn’t a forest! It was an existing, thriving, nation—the epidemic was so complete that people died in the fields. And you have to take this in the most gruesome way just like it sounds: the corn the Pilgrims grew was often fertilized by the rotting flesh of the bodies of the natives who died from the smallpox epidemic, from starvation etc," he said.

“There is no telling what might have happened had the English not gained that toehold in Plymouth in 1620-1621--because all the natives were dead--and then slaughtered the Pequot to the south in the same way. And eventually destroyed all the inhabitants of the continent save a few thousand that exist  today," the analyst said. 

“It is unconscionable that people use it as anything other than a day to reflect on that history. The other part of it is that slavery is endemic, and completely embedded in the national project. The first slaves taken were natives—these people didn’t want to do the work themselves. And then almost contemporaneously—the first Africans arrived in chains in 1619. The early ship that may have deposited the most recent smallpox blankets in 1615 in Patuxet was a slaver, a ship that was looking for slaves," he said. 

“Also, the history—in my particular town, Salem is known for its maritime history—unwritten is the fact that the first American ship, built in the colonies, to embark on the Atlantic slave trade--was commanded by Captain Pierce of Salem. This is part and parcel of everything that follows, how the country grew and how it became a power," he noted. 

“When Americans celebrate the holiday without doing this, it’s absolutely reprehensible, without thorough reconstruction, a revision of the history we are taught as children, and if there are teachers they have a duty to speak up. The difficulty is that we are shoveling shit against the tide as it were, because this is still going on. It’s still part of the project. You look at Bolivia and you see what the coup leader Anez has said the same rhetoric as John Winter 400 years ago, she said the satanic rituals, the ‘satanic rituals’ of the Natives are abominations and the Natives should not inhabit the cities, they should go back to Chaco, they should go back to the mountains – a thoroughly racist and exterminationist policy, supported again by the United States, by this white supremacist, expansionist project with seamless continuity. From 1620, the day we ‘celebrate’ today and now: 400 years of pillage of the continent and destruction of its people,   in the service of European expansionist settlements and white supremacy," he concluded. 

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