Thanksgiving from an Indian Perspective
Nov. 27, 2016 Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor “Thanksgiving from an Indian Perspective”
This is taken from Wamsutta James’ Suppressed Speech on the 350th Anniversary of the Pilgrim’s Landing at Plymouth Rock (September 10, 1970)
It is with mixed emotion that I stand here to share my thoughts. This is a time of celebration for you—celebrating an anniversary of a beginning for the white man in America. A time of looking back, of reflection. It is with a heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my People.
Even before the Pilgrims landed it was common practice for explorers to capture Indians, take them to Europe and sell them as slaves for 220 shillings apiece. The Pilgrims had hardly explored the shores of Cape Cod for four days before they had robbed the graves of my ancestors and stolen their corn and beans. Mourt’s Relation describes a searching party of sixteen men. Mourt goes on to say that this party took as much of the Indians’ winter provisions as they were able to carry.
Massasoit, the great Sachem of the Wampanoag, knew these facts, yet he and his People welcomed and befriended the settlers of the Plymouth Plantation. Perhaps he did this because his Tribe had been depleted by an epidemic. Or his knowledge of the harsh oncoming winter was the reason for his peaceful acceptance of these acts. This action by Massasoit was perhaps our biggest mistake. We, the Wampanoag, welcomed you, the white man, with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end; that before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a free people.
These are arrowheads my cousins and I found in the fields of our family plantation near Edmonton, KY. They probably belonged to Cherokee hunters in my home state whose name derives from Cherokee description of the area which meant “dark and bloody ground.” I don’t know if that is how they viewed Kentucky at the time or if that was a prophecy for when they would elect Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul to the United States Senate…. But I will not speculate further on that point.
One of my relatives, for whose family I am named, Edmund Rogers, settled there following the Revolutionary War to establish a slave plantation. Since these spear and arrowheads were found lying on the ground in freshly tilled fields, it is likely that they come from the most recent period of Indian occupation…. Which was probably about when Edmund Rogers showed up.
Archaeologists loosely break down ancient history in the categories of the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. Until four thousand years ago, virtually all weapons used in hunting and in war were made of stone, wood, or bone. Civilizations were overtaken when a neighboring civilization made an advance in their weapon technology, replacing stone tipped spears with bronze swords and shields, and then the harder iron weapons cut right through bronze helmets.
Gun powder eventually gave birth to cannon and guns. Edmund Rogers rode his horse from the early modern era of the British Colonies into what was still the Stone Age of the Native Americans of the west. He didn’t have any greater claim to the land than the Cherokee who had been there for centuries, he just had better weapons.
I listened to a few Thanksgiving sermons this week on line. I was, frankly, shocked by how many otherwise seemingly intelligent speakers still talk about Thanksgiving in the mythic terms of a grand meeting of generous natives with struggling European settlers. I’m not going to argue the finer points of that first Thanksgiving today but suffice it to say that your elementary school plays didn’t give you a very factual account of the meeting of these two cultures.
By the time the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts, European diseases were already spreading across North America and the native population was realizing the beginning of what would amount to a genocide.
There were instances of cooperation and trade between whites and Indians but mostly it was a competitive relationship between millions of Native Americans and thousands of well-armed Europeans. The first reflex of Christopher Columbus upon meeting Indians in the Caribbean was to capture them and take them back to Europe as slaves.
The first reflex of starving European pilgrims was to rob them of their food and, this is an ugly thing to relate, but they even dug up fresh graves and ate the newly deceased natives… not, I must admit, the only instance of cannibalism among our founding fathers. Oh, and they didn’t eat turkey back then. They ate eels. I didn’t want to bring this up before Thanksgiving but I felt like a little reality orientation was due.
There were moments of sharing, trading, and positive contact but when you talk about the European settlement of North America you have to look at the whole, and not just a sit-down dinner of beans and corn and fish…. Let’s call them fish… that’s easier for some of you to imagine.
We stole food, we stole land, and we violently killed millions of Indians. I don’t think that you can accurately say that white settlers are directly intentionally responsible for killing the estimated 90 million Indians who died in that time period because I think that Small Pox and other diseases may have killed many more than our swords and muskets but, still, there is no reason for Natives to have warm fuzzies about Thanksgiving.
This year, on Thanksgiving, we are in the midst of a Native American civil rights movement whose images of attack dogs, tear gas, rubber bullets, and fire hoses being turned on the Indians gathered at Standing Rock, North Dakota rivals what we saw in Mississippi and Alabama during the Civil Rights demonstrations of the 1960’s.
Thank God for the internet, without it we would never have heard about the protests against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. When the corporate media says anything about it at all, it is usually propaganda to cover up the illegal activity of the Pipeline Company and the local law enforcement.
The Dakota Access Pipeline is a $3.8 billion project that has already built most of its 1100-mile-long pipeline. Though I wish that the whole project could be scrapped in favor of leaving that dirty oil in the ground and focusing on wind and solar power, I am relatively certain that while we might hope for some solution other than putting the pipeline under the Missouri River on Sioux land, the pipeline project just has too much money behind it to stop it entirely.
The more than 3000 people who are determined to remain camped out at Standing Rock through the winter are unlikely to be successful if you define success in terms of getting the project entirely shut down. But there is a larger victory here, in my mind. The Indian demonstrators, who prefer to be called “water protectors,” are, in their protest, raising a lightning rod that is bringing indigenous tribes together in a more powerful way than has been seen for a hundred years.
My friend, Stacy Wheeler, just returned from spending a week volunteering at the camp and she has decided to get her affairs in order here and to return to the camp indefinitely. The camp is following strict rules of non-violence, demanding that they follow the law in their protests. There are no weapons and not even things that might be mistaken for weapons. They do not allow drugs or alcohol in the camp.
They are devoting themselves primarily to prayer and religious ceremonies. They are living communally, sharing food and shelter, and using their own bodies to impede the construction of the pipeline. The excessively militarized security guards working for the pipeline company and those deputized by the Morton County Sherriff’s department have sprayed down hundreds of the demonstrators with fire hoses in the subfreezing temperatures. They use tear gas, rubber bullets, and attack dogs against peaceful demonstrators. Lately, crop dusting airplanes have been flying over the camp at night dropping what his believed to be pesticides on the camp. According to my friend, Stacy, just about everyone has developed skin irritations and a cough from whatever it is that they are spraying in what amounts to chemical warfare.
Several of the deputies brought in from surrounding counties have left their posts, refusing to support the unjust and probably illegal practices of the Morton County Sherriff. Some of his own staff members have quit their jobs and joined the Indians in the camp. I believe that the pipeline will eventually be completed but I also believe that the Standing Rock Sioux have already won the moral battle and the longer they can remain encamped in large numbers the more the media will have to start telling the story of this 21stcentury civil rights movement.
In a separate video that I will post as a companion piece to this one, I’ll tell you more about how you can support the camp at Standing Rock. I and some friends will be going up there on Christmas Day for a few days.
I will be back here to tell you about what I saw on New Year’s Day. If, for some reason, I am not able to be back here by New Year’s Day, then I bet I will have a much more colorful sermon to deliver whenever I do get back.
Just like in the days of the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s, the pipeline company and the government in North Dakota are sure that their aggressive tactics and the harshness of the Dakota winter will wear down the resolve of the Indians. Our federal government has already sent FBI agents in to infiltrate the camp. Obama is doing nothing to stop the abuse of the Native Americans and Donald Trump has received millions in political donations from the pipeline company. You might say that the dye is already cast but I will leave you with this thought:
Just before the battle of Little Big Horn, Gen. George Custer wrote reassuringly in a letter to a friend -“There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry.”
