Olson/ZNet T-Giving Commentary

[doodadem]

ZNet Commentary
Thanksgiving 2005 November 24, 2005
By Gary Olson

As a child I understood how to give; I have
forgotten this grace since I became civilized.

-- Chief Luther Standing Bear, Oglala Sioux

I always experience mixed feelings about Thanksgiving. I appreciate
that harvest festivals of gratitude go back to the ancient Greeks,
Chinese, Hebrews and Egyptians and we know that Native Americans
observed these harvest celebrations throughout the year. On the other
hand, I'm mindful of Jon Stewart's sardonic quip, "I celebrated
Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my family
over to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and
took their land."

Last Thanksgiving, members of my family paused at the graves of Native
Americans in God's Acre cemetery in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania's historic
district. It seemed an appropriate spot to ponder the land grab, ethnic
cleansing, and mass explusion of the "wild savage" Native-American
Indian nations by the "civilized" European colonizers.

History records that after the English torched a Pequot village and
killed men,women and children, the Protestant ultra fundamentalist,
Cotton Mather, approvingly proclaimed,"It was supposed that no less than
600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day." And in his
Thanksgiving sermon, delivered in Plymouth in 1623, Mather the Elder
"gave thanks for the devastating plague of smallpox which wiped out the
majority of the Wampanoag Indians who had been their primary
benefactors." Mather praised God for destroying "chiefly the young men
and children..." Historian V.G. Kiernan recounts that in 1648 Dutch
colonists initiated the practice of offering bounties for Delaware
Indian scalps, women included.

Material gain always assumed a larger role than accorded in our national
creation myths. Recall that Jamestown wasn't founded by the English
state, but at the behest of English financial speculators. And John
Steele Gordon reminds us in his Empire of Wealth, "The early Puritan
merchants would often write, at the head of their ledgers,'In the name
of God and profits.'"

In any event, we know that in short order the New England Indians were
decimated or sold into slavery by the Puritans. Toward that end, the
English adopted terrorism as their favorite tactic against the Pequots
in what is now Conneticut. Through a combination of violence and a
smallpox epidemic, the Indian population of North America itself was
reduced from 10 million (some recent estimates are considerably higher)
to less than one million.

In retrospect, Sitting Bull, Geronimo and Crazy Horse embodied the
territory's fledgling "Department of Homeland Security." As the t-shirt
featuring a picture of Indian warriors proclaims, "Fighting Terrorism
since 1492." Surely, Native-Americans observing a traditional
Thanksgiving would be like African-Americans celebrating Founder's Day
of the Ku Klux Klan. In that vein, while every school child hears the
legend of the Pilgrims stepping ashore at Plymouth Rock in 1620, how
many learn that in 1619, the first African captives were sold to North
American colonists at Jamestown?

Note: Some whites always opposed both Indian genocide and slavery.
Although largely absent from our history books, their heroic behavior
against injustice is also part of America's legacy, the part we should
gratefully celebrate. (See Tim Wise, "Not Everyone Felt That Way,"
9/14/05, ZNet Commentary).

What about today? As I write this, the Iraq war continues as approach
the 2,100 mark in returning coffins we're discouraged from viewing.
Again this year, loved ones will experience the pain of permanently
empty places at Thanksgiving dinners across our land. While in Iraq
there have been upwards of 35,000 funerals since the U.S. invasion in
March, 2003. Although centuries apart, there's more than a thread of
continuity between the colonization of this country and the unspeakable
violence visited on Iraqis..

"Welcome to Injun Country," is the military's greeting for new arrivals
in Iraq. And this grotesque parallel was unwittingly highlighted by the
Pentagon when it labeled an attack against Iraqi resistance fighters as
"Operation Plymouth Rock." Is expansion in service to an inexorable
profit motive the common demoninator joining both eras? Indian land
then, Iraqi oil now. The First Americans understood that

Only after the last tree has been cut down;
Only after the last fish has been caught;
Only after the last river has been poisoned;
Only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten.
--Cree Indian Prophecy

So yes, next Thursday I'll delight in spending time with family and
friends while acknowledging a multitude of blessings. But none of this
will be remotely associated with a storybook "First Thanksgiving" and
its possible manifestations in Iraq today. I'll recall Nez Perce Chief
Joseph's eloquent plea, "I hope that no more groans of wounded men and
women will ever go to the ear of the Great Spirit Chief above, and that
all people may be one people."

I'll be grateful that more and more Americans oppose an immoral war
based on a pack of lies; grateful the curtain is being lifted on the
realities of corporate globalization; proud that in stark contrast to
the government's despicable betrayal, our citizens manifested such
magnificent solidarity, compassion, and love toward Katrina's victims.

Finally I'll appreciate that recent events allow Americans to connect
the dots among racism, war, social injustice and environmental
degredation; grateful for what I sense is a rare defining moment for
national renewal and a communion of commitment on behalf of fundamental
social transformation. These are not insignificant gifts for which to
offer a form of grace.

__________

Gary Olson is chair of the Political Science Department at Moravian
College in Bethlehem, PA. Contact: [e-mail]

[papau]

1. Hate mail, while neither desired nor appreciated, will be graded

for content, form and grammar"

I like Mr. Wise!

:-)