Having lived in the United States for over 10 years of my life, I know how important the holiday of Thanksgiving is to Americans. Some consider it more important than Christmas! Today, it is a secular holiday and a time for families to be together and to be thankful for the people and things in our lives. What I was taught in elementary school was that Thanksgiving was a day to recreate the Thanksgiving of the Pilgrims and Puritans in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621, who were simply thankful for the bountiful harvest they has that year. It is said that they celebrated with the Native tribes who had taught them certain agricultural techniques, basically saving them from starvation.

In recent years, the holiday has come under some scrutiny by those who see it as a huge lie to prevent shame upon the European separatists who settled in America. In a section of his book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, James Loewen analyzes the inaccuracies in American history textbooks on the dealings which occurred between the settlers and the Native Americans. He criticizes them because rather than telling the truth about what happened, the textbooks dehumanize certain people such as Christopher Columbus and portrays them as heroes when in reality, Columbus slaughtered millions of Native Americans.

The story goes that on the first Thanksgiving, the European settlers and the Native Americans sat down for a meal to celebrate and be thankful for the bounty they had just reaped from the earth. What really happened, however, was that “the colonists offered the Indians a toast to eternal friendship, whereupon the chief, his family, advisors, and two hundred followers dropped dead of poison.” This video tells the story of what really happened and why Thanksgiving should not be a celebration based on the coming together of the colonists and Native Americans.

People often forget that millions of Native Americans died once the European settlers attempted to colonize America. It is often called the “American Holocaust” because over 100 million members of the oppressed, the Native Americans, were killed by the oppressors, the settlers. This was over 95% of the American population. This event, although often forgotten, is “far and away the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world,” yet we still celebrate it today.

My family and I have never had big celebrations on Thanksgiving, often passing it along as a normal day. After learning more about what really happened in the 1600s, I will surely continue on this path. It is astonishing that we as a generation not only do not know what happened, but once we do still celebrate the holiday. Perhaps for some it has evolved as more of a celebration of family than of being thankful for different aspects of their lives. In this case it may be an option to transition to a holiday such as Family Day in Canada in which this could be done.

Overall I find it extremely hypocritical of the history textbooks in America to hide this act of genocide, yet to cover the Nazi Holocaust extensively. As an American student, we learn everything about the Holocaust of World War II and nothing about the extermination of Indians in our own country. With more exposure perhaps we can change the textbooks to not only cover the good that happened in the US, but the bad as well. I think it would only be fair to teach our students the truth and to give them all the information possible.