Nearly four-hundred years ago in 1621, Americans had their first Thanksgiving, a peaceful feast between the Pilgrims and the Indigenous Wampanoag Tribe. Today, Thanksgiving is celebrated similar to how the first Thanksgiving was thought to be celebrated: friends and family come together and eat turkey, vegetables, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie. It is a time of peace and a time to be grateful. Fast forward to 2016, and the relations between the United States and their Indigenous People still are not nearly as peaceful as anyone would like to believe it once was.
Just shortly after the first Thanksgiving in 1621, the English colonists began expanding their settlements and trading into the Pequot Tribe’s land which sparked the conflict of the Pequot War between the English colonists, the Pequots, and several other Indigenous tribes. The Pequots were weakened by disease and the all-around brutality with which the English and their Native American allies fought. When the English had won the war, they enslaved the surviving Pequots and banned their tribe from continuing. Never heard of this before? That’s okay, I hadn’t either until my history class last year. Sort of like how I first learned Christopher Columbus was a good guy who had discovered America.
So maybe you’re not taught about the Pequot War, but you definitely learned about the Trail of Tears, right? You know, when thousands of Native Americans (many being Cherokees) were forced to vacate their own land just because Andrew Jackson and the United States Government told them to? As a result, over 4,000 people forced to walk the Trail of Tears died as a result of hunger, exhaustion, and diseases and tens of thousands more were forced to resettle elsewhere.
So all of these disputes over land and trade sound really bad but America is done with that, right? That was a long time ago, right? If you know anything about the Dakota Access Pipeline, then you know the answer to both of those questions. The US Army Corps of Engineers approved plans to build a pipeline that would transfer oil through four states. This pipeline also happens to disturb the sacred ground of the Standing Rock Sioux, which was brought to the US Army Corps of Engineers’ attention when the Standing Rock Sioux filed a complaint saying the pipeline would “destroy [their] burial sites, prayer sites, and culturally significant artifacts”. The pipeline could also potentially be putting the Standing Rock Sioux at risk as a spill from the pipeline would mean a serious contamination of their land and drinking water. The plans for construction of the pipeline have caused protests at the site that have since turned violent.
Despite the continued conflicts between the US Government and Native American’s, America continues to celebrate Thanksgiving and the peaceful relationships it champions. For one day, Americans can celebrate a relationship that never truly existed.
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