Share a story before the meal and contemplate these words before each swallow.
via Tom Paine:
“…and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions…”
-from George Washington’s 1789 proclamation establishing Thanksgiving as a national holiday. Two-hundred fifteen years later, we submit the preemptive war against Iraq as one of the gravest transgressions committed in the name of the nation.
via Institute for Public Accuracy:
Author of the two-volume book “American Indian History,” Robert Venables said today: “Hallmark Cards is not likely to promote the fact that the first thing the Pilgrims did when they landed in what is now Massachusetts was loot Indian graves. The original Thanksgiving held great potential for cooperation, but the children of that first Thanksgiving slaughtered each other as the Pilgrims demanded more and more Indian land. The white children of the first celebration sold the Indian children of the first Thanksgiving into slavery in Virginia, the Caribbean, Spain and Morocco…. If you want to see what globalization does if it’s carried out by right-wing corporate forces, consider that after 1492 half the globe — the entire Western Hemisphere — was forced to accept a Western standard of religion, politics and economics. As for the United States, it broke all its treaties — at least 395 of them — with Indian nations.”
Venables teaches a course on American Indians at Cornell University.
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