Thanksgiving is a hypocritical holiday built on the destruction of Native American society and the total removal of their presence and their history from this land and that is why, I believe, it is the perfect holiday for this nation built on injustice and.

Autumn of 1621 was the first so-called thanksgiving where pilgrims and Native Americans feasted together on the fruits of their labor, though the pilgrims performed the labor and the Wampanoag tribe provided the knowledge to save the first pilgrims from a more than assured starvation. However, it wasn’t until 168 years later, 1789, that an official thanksgiving day would be established.  

Thanksgiving is a day of thanks, a time for family and friends to reconnect and give thanks for what they have and for what will come. But for a day filled with thanks, so little is given to those who were stepped over to make this holiday a reality. 

America, in her early days, was a rapidly expanding nation, one who had not yet known borders whose people and government thought it was God’s will that they expand, a manifest destiny so to say. It is due to this ideology that almost all Native American nations were exterminated from this nation of freedom.

So why is it that we as a nation celebrate this holiday as one of thanks, as one of happiness, yet don’t even give an ounce of thought to the lives lost and the families destroyed in the pursuit of justice and liberty for all? That is because we are the furthest thing from that. We are a nation filled with a history of injustice and brutal prosecution of those who stood in the way of our progress, from slavery to the refusal of Jewish refugees during World War II to segregation. This country is wrought with injustice. 

However, this is not a one-sided rant. History is filled with many more terrible atrocities. I believe that this country wants to do better, needs to do better. Tensions are awry, protests frequent, this country is tearing at the seams and it is because we refuse to see this country for what it is. A great and powerful nation built on injustice, we refuse to recognize this simple fact and instead focus on fighting each other in bitter wars that cause nothing but further dissonance. 

All is not lost though, as grim as times may seem, as divided as we may be, we must recognize this simple fact that we are a nation filled with a deep and brutal history of injustice, and must fight this injustice, and once again become a nation united, under one flag and so, for this reason, with somber remembrance of this countries volatile past and present I wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving.