Indians plan Plymouth, Mass. Thanksgiving protest

[ensho]

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/11/26/indians_plan_plymouth_mass_thanksgiving_protest/


American Indian activists are planning to mark Thanksgiving by holding a "Day of Mourning" in Plymouth.

The United American Indians of New England say they have been holding the annual protest since 1970 to call attention to the disastrous consequences that eventually followed that first feast between European settlers and Native American tribes nearly 400 years ago.

The group's co-leader Moonanum James, a Wampanoag Indian, said native people have no reason to celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims. He called Plymouth Rock a monument to racism and genocide.

Organizers said participants in the protest planned to gather at about noon on Thursday by the statue of Massasoit on Cole's Hill above the Plymouth
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[JonQ]

1. They have only themselves to blame

If you feed them and they will stick around and cause trouble.

Sometimes nature can be cruel, and starvation isn't pretty, but that's how it works sometimes.

[ensho]

4. surely you jest

nt

[Deep13]

20. "They" weren't around in 1620.

And the first winter, some of the natives feed the Pilgrims involuntarily. At their first landing east of Plymouth, they found a stash of dried maize-corn that they took. It prevented the disaster of the first winter from becoming an extinction. They eventually repaid the man they stole from when Samoset arrived and complained about it. There were signs of a recent catastrophe everywhere where the Pilgrims landed and they may have assumed that the owner of the corn died. In any event, circumstances didn't give them any real choice.

[msongs]

2. is it true the Wampanoag tribe never fought and killed other native americans? nt

[Warpy]

8. No, there were occasional territorial squabbles

but they had been at peace with their neighbors for a very long time when the Pilgrims arrived.

They stayed peaceful because they were so prosperous, combining agriculture, hunting and fishing. They knew they had a good thing going and didn't want to screw it up.

They even stayed peaceful with the Pilgrims as long as they could manage, but a combination of cultural friction and misunderstanding and one hothead Pilgrim family put the kibosh on that and relations soured quickly.

They soured to such an extent that when their numbers diminished enough that they had to intermarry with the colonists, they intermarried with black servants rather than the richer whites, something they continue to this day.

I've been privileged to know a few of them. Some still hate white folks and some are friendly, but they'd still never marry any of us.

[Deep13]

18. Not true.

New England in 162 was in a constant state of uncertainty and Massasoit's own people, the Nipmucks, had nearly been wiped out by a plague a year or two before. American Indians are just as aggressive, greedy and cruel as anyone else. That is part of being human. The natives were real human beings and not idealized card-board cut-outs living free from negativity.

You are right that natives who were allied with the Pilgrims remained at peace with them for a generation. I wasn't until the kids and new arrivals took over that things really went down hill. The Englishmen by mid-century had become greedy and numerous and English-native relations began its downhill side in the North at that time. It started in the South pretty much as soon as English adventurers arrived looking for gold and silver.

[proteus_lives]

22. Yep, That's true.

"The natives were real human beings and not idealized card-board cut-outs living free from negativity."

That's the myth of the Noble Savage and it's just as racist as the other end of the spectrum.

[JonQ]

23. I never understood the way some people fetishize indians

They're such a peaceful and enlightened people, in tune with the environment and with the spirits of the animals. They lived in perfect harmony until evil white people showed up.

Yeah, no. They had plenty of conflicts limited in scope by a lack of technology rather than altruism. They practice slavery, cannibalism, infanticide, rape and murder. In other words they showed all those same characteristics that all humans express.

[proteus_lives]

25. You're right, it was technology.

If the tech levels had been reversed. The Native Americans would been crossing the ocean to colonize and loot Europe and Africa.

Every sin and short-coming that present in the Europeans was present in the Natives.

The sad fact was that no one on earth during the that time would have had another conclusion. The human race hadn't reached that level of social evolution to avoid that conflict.

[JonQ]

26. Have you read "guns germs and steel"

by jared diamond? He goes over a lot of the reasons behind the different levels/rates of development from the beginning of civilization onward, and the impact this has had on modern life. It's pretty interesting read and although he probably isn't 100% right he does do a good job providing evidence and logic behind his conclusions.

[proteus_lives]

28. I have not but it sounds interesting.

I'll put it on my to-read list. Thanks for the tip!

[KittyWampus]

27. an indicator of that are the Plains Indians & their culture which sprang up w/the horses' arrival.

[proteus_lives]

29. Yep.

And how quickly the tribes and nations of the east coast adapted to guns and trading with the Europeans.

[Warpy]

30. It wasn't my intention to portray them as noble savages

merely as people who had realized that stable borders were preferable to warfare and empire that risked an extremely comfortable lifestyle.

The plague, I understood, was brought by traders two years before the Pilgrims arrived and pretty much wiped out the Patuxent population. What that plague was is open to debate: the Wampanoag had no resistance at all to any of the diseases of European urban overcrowding. It could have been as mundane as measles or as exotic as typhoid from a carrier that hadn't been passed to a crew which had recovered from it at some time in the past, although it was quite possibly smallpox that had been passed around among the ship's crew and traders all the way across the Atlantic. A 30% death rate on that kind of a sea journey would have been considered unremarkable. It was a dangerous business that had tremendous potential payoffs for the survivors.

[proteus_lives]

33. What if the Native Americans had been more resisent to European diseases?

I think that's a fasnacting "What If". I think we would be living in a vastly different country.

"merely as people who had realized that stable borders were preferable to warfare and empire that risked an extremely comfortable lifestyle."

If the Europeans had arrived a hundred years later, would that be still be true?

[Warpy]

35. There are too many "what ifs" to consider

What if Europe had realized constant warfare was a waste of treasury and life and had turned to the type of scientific exploration we saw in this country in the late 18th and all of the 19th centuries a century or two earlier? What if they'd realized the dangers of open sea voyages weren't worth baubles, timber, and glory through warfare and simply stayed home until technology improved to make it safer and medicine had improved to inoculate the natives against the diseases that would kill them? What if humanism had reigned supreme over superstition and thralldom to Rome and cultural arrogance had been kept in check?

All sorts of scenarios would have been possible, but we all need to deal with the ones that were.

I've celebrated Thanksgiving with tribal folks and told them I'm thankful they're still here, and so am I. They were pretty cool with that. We're all survivors of that ugly period in our history.

[PuraVidaDreamin]

3. Geez, I live only 60 miles away from there

I should really go and spend at least one Thanks Giving day there with our Native American brethren.

[Bobbieo]

6. They have chosen the wrong day - Columbus Day should be the target.

[Warpy]

10. They've protested that one, too

something I have a great deal of sympathy with. First contact was a catastrophe whenever it occurred.

First contact happened 2 years before the Pilgrims arrived. When they got there, they found the village of Patuxent vacated by Wampanoags fleeing the diseases that first contact had brought, fields cleared and houses vacant. The Pilgrims were too proud to use "heathen" shelter, but they did use the fields they found.

It's been estimated the death rate was 90% after first contact with any tribe. It was completely unintentional, but it was horrific and certainly ample reason alone to protest Columbus Day.

[Deep13]

19. Columbus "sold" the New World partly by promoting the enslavement of natives. nt

[Submariner]

5. Can't rightly blame them

[951-Riverside]

7. If it werent for the European meddling the U.S would have been a 3rd world warzone

...instead of the self proclaimed 1st world warzone with gangs, guns and random rampages, that it is today.

[TheCowsCameHome]

9. They have the protest every year.

The local news media mentions it, and then the story goes away until next November.

[floridablue]

11. Shouldn't that be named

United American Native Americans of New England ? I thought we were not supposed to call Indians, Indians anymore.

[NightWatcher]

13. it's cool, you have permision to use that term

it helps me when people identify themselves by their tribe, if they belong, but I'm cool with the terms, Native American, American Indian, or Indian.



-Mitakuye Oyasin

[JoeyT]

14. Depends on who you're asking.

I've had white folks spend fifteen minutes bitching me out over the word "Indian" even when they know I'm referring to myself.
"Native Americans" has always kind of irritated me. Technically it should refer to anyone from North, South, or Central America. That or anyone that was born in any of those places, since that's what the word "native" means.

[JonQ]

24. They're taking it back

like the NAACP with "colored people".

[Ron Green]

12. They should do this at the nearest Tribal Mega-Casino.

Make the irony work for everyone.

[lies and propaganda]

15. what a shitty and rude comment.

More than the majority of us got nothing but fucked up our asses for being Natives, so your trite casino comment was lame and bullshit at the very least.

[Ron Green]

36. I don't know how much work you do with tribal people and issues, but in my part of the country

the Casino is the 800-pound gorilla that influences economics, employment and social services for LOTS of people, tribal and otherwise. The game has changed, at least around here. "Thanksgiving" is a much more complex issue, and very different from "Columbus Day."

[Deep13]

17. You know that the vast majority of American Indians don't own casinos, right? nt

[krabigirl]

31. wow

[Deep13]

16. Well, have at it.

The 1620 Pilgrims were simply one tribe of many living in eastern MA of that time. They were good neighbors and acted like any other tribe. They traded with their neighbors, offered assistance to their friends and made war on their and their friends' enemies. They even used native currency amongst themselves. The 1620 Englishmen saved Massasoit twice, once from capture by the Naragansets (sp?) and once from disease. And they moved into unoccupied land. An epidemic had wiped out much of the Nipmuck population shortly before the Pilgrims arrived. They were eager to make friends with the Pilgrims in order to restore a balance of power with the Naragansets.

It was not until the second generation and later arrivals in Plymouth and Boston took over that things got ugly. Aggressive land dealing and heavy handed treatment generally led some of the Indian nations to revolt against the Englishmen in King Philip's War.

[Blue For You]

21. Thanksgiving is the Plymouth Crock of holidays.

[juno jones]

32. I volunteer to be the first of the pilgrim's spawn to be returned whence I came.

Maybe I can get some health care there.

[951-Riverside]

34. Why havent you done that yet? n/t

[juno jones]

37. 'Cause they won't take a cook with no money and no finalized college degree

At my age and all, I probably am not going anywhere unless the indians can pool their resources and send me.