How educated is the Catlin community about the history of Thanksgiving?
Courtesy of History.com
With the colorful leaves, pumpkin-spiced lattes, and an abundance of turkey-shaped items, the season of Thanksgiving is here. People are quick to jump to festivities involving food and family, but do they realize the overlooked history behind this holiday?
Thanksgiving is an event with much controversy, but I had never known specifically why. So what happened at the first Thanksgiving? Was it a peaceful encounter of food and laughter, or was there an underlying malignancy within this interaction?
Getting an accurate picture of Thanksgiving is challenging, because of the variety of perspectives.
The feast of Thanksgiving celebrated the first successful harvest, including the Wampanoag tribe as guests. The holiday was later established by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 as an attempt to foster interconnectivity between the U.S. and tribal nations.
According to a blog from Potawatomi.org called The true, dark history of Thanksgiving, Native Americans from the Wampanoag tribe arrived at the Thanksgiving location after hearing gunshots. While the tribe was away, European colonists stole from their winter provisions. The Pilgrims committed brutal actions against the tribe soon after, including the beheading of a Wampanoag leader.
Because of these atrocities, many indigenous people and others view Thanksgiving as a day of mourning, remembering all of the lives taken by the pilgrim’s arrival.
In my personal experience in history classes, I had never learned about the history of Thanksgiving, which made me curious about my peers and whether they had learned about this. To further understand the knowledge of Catlin Gabel Upper School students, I sent out a survey, conducted several interviews with Upper Schol students, and researched this history.
The survey showed that 85% of Upper School students do not remember learning about the history of this holiday at Catlin Gabel School (CGS). The survey also revealed that the majority of students do not know this history at all, which can be harmful to those with Indigenous backgrounds who mourn the deaths of millions of Native Americans on this holiday.
Junior Andy Han stated that he is “not surprised that Catlin students don’t know much about Thanksgiving, because they aren’t taught about it,” and that he has never learned about it.
In many schools, the story of Thanksgiving is taught in younger grades. However, the retelling of this historical event often overlooks the brutalities of the holiday.
During the season of Thanksgiving, Americans are frequently exposed to the iconography of turkeys and the coming together of Indigenous peoples and Pilgrims in association with the holiday. These surrounding messages make the lack of knowledge about the actual history more poignant.
I interviewed two history teachers at CGS, Patrick Walsh and Peter Shulman, who both explained that there is so little time in the year to include all of the history they want to, even though they find many different topics in history important. As students advocate for less work, the amount of material allowed in classes decreases. Although there is constant pressure to shorten the curriculum, both teachers already include an abundance of Indigenous history in their standard history classes.
In addition to providing an interview, Walsh and Shulman referred me to many sources relating to this topic. One source from Walsh included a guide from The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Education Department, which included a quote mentioning a Wampanoag historian named Linda Combs.
Combs wrote “...the story of friendly Indians giving food, knowledge, and land to the Pilgrims’ is a myth created to make white people feel comfortable. This myth is reinforced by school curriculums, holiday pageants, and children's books, which erases the history of crime committed against Indigenous people.”
In addition to a historian’s perspective, I sought out CGS student opinions.
When asked about her experiences with Thanksgiving, junior Karen Heredia recalled that in elementary school she would have classes that just “talked about the happiness that surrounds Thanksgiving” but “never really dove into the history of it.” “What I know about it is because of my family,” she explained.
Heredia also mentioned that Thanksgiving is not celebrated in Mexico, asking “Why would we be celebrating an event where loads of Native Americans were murdered?”
Over the years, Thanksgiving has become a festive celebration of food and family. Even with its dark past, it has been made into a holiday encouraging unity and love.
The myth of a peaceful and unity-oriented first Thanksgiving still stands, even though this false narrative can be misleading, as explained by Combs.
As many CGS students are unaware of this history, the question remains: Should people separate this holiday from its origin, or should there be more discussion surrounding Thanksgiving?