'Thanksgiving': Native truth vs. colonial myth
By
Leslie Feinberg
Clinton's 1999 "Thanksgiving Proclamation" was predictable:
Pilgrims, peace, prosperity and deity.
The Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony observed the first
"Thanksgiving," he said, "to give thanks for the bounty of
their fields, the fruits of their labor, the chance to live in
peace with their Native American neighbors and the blessings of
a land where they could live and worship freely."
What a myth. And it's a lie that well serves the elite class
Clinton politically represents.
The fact is that many of the Pilgrims were wealthy
colonizers on behalf of the English crown. And Plymouth, Mass.,
was their first conquest.
The year after the first Thanksgiving--1622--Captain Miles
Standish led a Pilgrim band to murder seven of the
Massachusetts Indians. They publicly displayed the severed head
of the leader in Plymouth as a warning to other Native
people.
In 1636, the colonialists unleashed all-out war on the
Pequot nation, who occupied what is now Rhode Island and
southern Connecticut. In one massacre alone, Puritan theologist
Cotton Mather boasted, "no less than 600 Pequot souls were
brought down to hell that day."
`Free Leonard Peltier!'
The 500-year-old colonial war against Native nations
continues today in the epoch of imperialism. From Big Mountain
to Wounded Knee, the struggles to defend self-determination,
sovereignty and treaty rights continues.
Perhaps one of the most well-known contemporary symbols of
U.S. state repression against Native peoples is the continuing
imprisonment of Leonard Peltier.
Millions of people around the world view Peltier as a
political prisoner.
Peltier was convicted of killing two FBI agents during a
government shoot-out on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975.
The American Indian Movement warrior is serving two
consecutive life sentences in federal prison. Yet the FBI has
admitted it has no idea who killed the agents. In effect,
Peltier is in jail just because he was present at the battle
and a leader of AIM.
And President Bill Clinton has refused to review the
clemency petition for Peltier that has been sitting on his desk
since his first term in office.
Clinton is not unaware of the struggle to demand that he
grant executive clemency to Peltier before the end of his
presidential term in January.
The Leonard Peltier Defense Committee has organized a
month-long occupation in Washington this month right across the
street from the Oval Office.
Other important events in November are also part of the
month-long effort to up the political ante to force Clinton to
act.
This year's National Day of Mourning is dedicated to the
battle to win freedom for Leonard Peltier.
Every year since 1970, Native peoples from many nations and
their supporters--led by United American Indians of New
England--gather in Plymouth on "Thanksgiving Day."
At the annual event Native people present the truth about
their history and the conditions faced by Indigenous peoples
throughout the Americas.
This year, in solidarity with the National Day of Mourning
event, other Native activists and their supporters plan to
block international traffic on the "Peace Bridge" that leads
from Buffalo, N.Y., into Fort Erie, Canada, on Nov. 27 at 2
p.m.
"Free Leonard Peltier" is one of the main demands of the
protest. The march and rally are also raising the demand for
freedom of Mumia Abu-Jamal and all political prisoners held
behind bars in the U.S.
Workers in this country--if they have a home and can afford
a good meal--may enjoy the holiday on Nov. 25, but they are not
celebrating the centuries of colonial and capitalist genocide
and oppression against Native peoples.
But the best way for all workers--all progressive people in
the United States--to show real solidarity with Native nations
is to stand up and defend their sovereignty, right to
self-determination and treaty rights.
And one way to start is to demand: Free Leonard Peltier,
right now.
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