From Today Online:
Most people hear the story of Thanksgiving from a young age and it’s pretty simple. A group of Pilgrims, fleeing religious persecution, sail to North American and settle on Plymouth Rock. After a hard winter, they celebrate a successful harvest with their new neighbors, Native Americans. Everybody’s grateful; the end.
But that’s only half the story. The Wampanoag tribe, the Indigenous people who lived at Plymouth Rock, experienced this moment very differently. Are your kids ready to hear the real history? The answer is probably yes.
“Parents can start by telling their kids the truth and offering their children the more complex narrative. Kids are smart and capable of understanding,” Matika Wilbur of the Swinomish and Tulalip tribes told TODAY Parents. She co-hosts the podcast All My Relations, which recently aired an episode called “Thanksgiving or Thankstaking?” that aims to understand the Wampanoag perspective.
“Thanksgiving is rooted in a historical fallacy,” Wilbur said, and the story is tied to the idea of white supremacy. “The main Pilgrim narrative coincides with colonization that was inherently oppressive and brutal.”
Parents might balk at introducing the “real history” to their children because they think their children can’t handle it. But that’s not giving them enough credit, Wilbur said.
The back story of Thanksgiving
Wilbur — who traveled to over 400 Tribal Nations for her documentary Project 562 — and her co-host Adrienne Keene, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation who is an assistant professor of American Studies and Ethic Studies at Brown University, spoke with Paula Peters and Linda Coombs, Wampanoag historical scholars, for the episode.
Peters said sharing the Wampanoag perspective is essential but can be tough for parents.
“It’s difficult because we have to talk about some raw topics in order to get a fuller, clearer understanding,” Peters, a citizen of Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and a researcher and journalist, told TODAY Parents. “Quite honestly, cherry picking that moment when the Wampanoag and Puritans happen to break bread as the ‘Kumbaya’ moment really does not do it any justice. The Wampanoag have been marginalized and forgotten and the back story is so incredibly critical for what ultimately happens.”
Read the complete article here.