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The Origins of Thanksgiving, According to the Snipe Clan
Someone called “Senator Kayse Jama (He/Him)” (apparently Jama is an Oregon State Senator**) has linked–on his Twitter account–to this person:
No idea who Anessa Hartman Haudenosaunee is, but, Lord, I love the fact that she’s a member of something called the “Snipe Clan.” (It’s the pedant in me. So sorry if that’s triggering.)
And, wait…what? I thought Lincoln proclaimed the fourth Thursday of every November an official “Thanksgiving” holiday largely to commemorate Union victories in the American Civil War (particularly the one at Gettysburg). And that–actually–he was simply codifying George Washington’s original intention from the last decades of the eighteenth century.
Am I wrong? Inquiring minds (mine, anyway) would like to know.
Or, is this just another Leftist nutball who’s detached herself from reality and the facts in order to spin a comfortable narrative that suits her (I’ve not checked its pronouns) narrative?
** As described on his Twitter profile, in order of precedence: “Somali-American. Son of a Camel Herder. Father of Twins.”
Published in General
This history of Thanksgiving as a federal holiday is doubtless accurate, but when I was in third and fourth grade in the US Thanksgiving was all about the Pilgrims, and the Indians (we used that word then) whom they made friends with who showed them how to plant corn with dead fish so it would grow and they wouldn’t starve and so come harvest time they all got together and had a big party because they were grateful. I think we even did a class play with plastic Pilgrim hats and some sort of Indian headgear and bows and arrows. Which has more impact on American culture: the literal history of the holiday or its myth? I’m voting for myth (myths are always more impactful) and perhaps that’s why there’s sometimes the negative response there is? And the (seems like) triggered response to the negtive response?
Then she is failing to live and honor her ethnic heritage. As President Reagan called out in his 1984 Thanksgiving Proclamation, the Iroquois people have a thousand year tradition of a Thanksgiving prayer.
Don’t care. It’s a typography fail in the graphic then.
The Snipe Clan sound like a bunch of ignorant Rousseau-and-sos.
I loved all the cultures that were represented at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade this year. They included an Indian tribe that did a dance in their native language and dress. Hello…!! They “participated” in a “Thanksgiving” parade!! This woman is spreading poison. I feel sorry for her kids. Our early presidents asked a nation to pray and give thanks for abundant blessings – what a concept!
From Lincoln:
https://wallbuilders.com/proclamation-thanksgiving-day-1863/
From Washington:
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-04-02-0091
The parade included a float of Mount Rushmore! Our history ! My favorite float was the new Heinz gravy boat, with the dancing turkey leg and mashed potatoes! (except for Santa – that’s the icing on the cake!)
The white interlopers ended the Iroquois’ destruction of just about every adjacent people. The Haudenosee attacked everybody including other Iroqoianan language tribes not in the Confederation.
Imagine if aliens had landed and conquered Europe in 1942 and the heirs of the Nazis were still claiming to be victims and their rightful claims denied.
Thanksgiving is a difficult day for people who try not to feel gratitude, and consider gratitude somehow humiliating. It’s a bit like being tone-deaf, you just don’t know why everyone’s so excited about all that rhythmic noise. If you feel gratitude, it has a way of making you grateful for more and more things: it starts with your family, your home, your coworkers, then after a while you wind up being grateful for your country, your way of life, Western Civilization. It’s…uh…a progressive condition, so to speak. It has an insidious way of undermining your sense of grievance, of being deserving, entitled, special. Some people might interpret being expected to be grateful almost as a kind of attack, of being called upon to surrender. Even worse, you can wind up wondering when someone’s going to send a bill for all this, of expecting you to do something in return. When feeling grateful, you wind up looking around for someone to thank.
When you’re grateful, you’re just not the star of the show.
What if they were space jews?
No real resemblance to Sen. Warren.
I’ll take your word for it, and go back and do more research. However, my original point stands: Iroquois or Algonquin, these nations were no more (or less) virtuous than those that arrived from overseas in the seventeenth century.
I read Anna Karenina earlier this summer. I was struck first by the fact that these Russian noblemen were going out and hunting snipe, and second by the fact that they bagged some.
And yeah, we did send some of the younger boy scouts on a snipe hunt back in my day.
I understood that reference
The “myth” as you call it has roots in history. It’s basically what happened. That doesn’t mean there weren’t other things that also happened, but it also doesn’t mean our traditional Thanksgiving story is somehow made up. What we’re seeing right now are rebels without a cause who are constantly on Red Alert for reasons to be irate, traditions they can dismantle. All out of a selfish need for validation and a sense of importance, a way to leave their footprints on the Sands of Time. They want to be able to look back and say, “See that? I did that! That change was because of ME! It’s because I LIVED!” But people who came before them and who were a lot smarter understood that traditions become traditions for a reason. And tearing them down for no good reason is not good for a strong and stable society. Leave it alone, I say. And that doesn’t mean I’m triggered. I’m just annoyed.
-edit typo
I didn’t. It sounds interesting, though.
I wonder what Mr. Z makes of Kwanzaa.
Potayto potahto, but it suits. It is nice to see you.
@daveschmidt – if you want to do Kwanzaa do Kwanzaa. But is it a big deal if everybody doesn’t agree with you about what it signifies?
This is exactly right. The conquest of North America by immigrant Europeans resulted in a drawn out contest between modernity and tribalism and modernity won for which I am most grateful on this day of Thanksgiving.
Thanks! You too! And hey we’re both Indians
I got the kind of answer I expected.
Agreed.
In other words, Ms. Hartman is believing the myth of the noble savage that Rousseau promulgated, but TBA as the best humorist on Ricochet combined Rousseau’s name with “so-and-so.”
The French philosopher Rousseau had this idea of “The Noble Savage,” the thinking that indigenous tribes if left alone and untouched by the evil influence of white people were these peaceful and, well, noble beings. AH if only we’d left them all alone, what a better place the world would be. When we read this in French class in high school, even I at age 17 knew it was silly. And it is. Because human beings are the same the world over and throughout time. Human nature is immutable. And indigenous tribes have all the same emotions and reactions, both noble and petty, as the rest of us, and they can be pretty violent too. I just think there are liberals who have a need to look down on others so they’ll have someone to rescue, whether anyone asked them to or not.
I’m glad you like those details. I’ve been thinking about your question, and haven’t come up with any better idea than the book that changed my life back in the 90s, even though my own journey through the history didn’t really start there. Everything has antecedents. My own story is an oversimplified story like Thanksgiving is.
But then, I don’t think the traditional Thanksgiving story is a bad thing to celebrate or to start with, even though the full story isn’t quite such a simple, feel-good story. But that’s the way most of life is, and the way most of our stories are. So let’s tell them anyway.
It’s late now, so I’ll list a few books tomorrow.
Ah! There are so many things to regret about Rousseau’s existence. I forgot about that one.
I give thanks that my forebears made it through the black death and developed immunity to typhus.
I give thanks that my forebears knew of germ theory.
I give thanks that my forebears made use of the wheel.
I give thanks that my forebears knew how to forge metal including making weapons that had to evolve rapidly.
I give thanks that my forebears evolved beyond a hunter-gatherer state.
I pity Anessa Hartman that her forebears didn’t. If she is resentful, she is actually resentful towards her forebears.
True. My first thought, when I saw the graphic and the lady’s demographic, ran more to the verbal (from Merriam Webster):
You’ll also have to stop dressing like a Pilgrim at work . . .
That’s why I like casual Fridays.
I don’t have any Choctaw blood, nor do I have Cherokee blood, though sometimes it seems like 60% of Americans say that they have Cherokee ancestors.
But I’d really like for someone’s ethnic or racial background not be a requirement to observe facts and make conclusions without the permission of others. That’s what America is all about.