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Thanksgiving revelry perpetuates a big lie

By ROSS RUNFOLA
as published in the Buffalo News
November 30, 2006

I didn't celebrate Thanksgiving. I am not alone. Many Native Americans do not celebrate the holiday. They, like I, do not believe in perpetuating another great white lie in American history.

Given the mass killings of their people and the theft of land by European colonists, legions of indigenous people gather at Plymouth Rock every Thanksgiving for a "National Day Of Mourning." If there were Native Americans at the first "Thanksgiving" in 1621, says John Two-Hawks, they came without an invitation since a massive wall was erected around the Plymouth Settlement to keep "Indians" out.

There is a hypocrisy re-enacting a mythical friendship that resulted in genocide as reprehensible as the Holocaust of World War II. There is a general consensus among demographers that between 9 million and 12 million Native Americans were in North America when the Pilgrims came. By the beginning of the 20th century, mass extermination through starvation, forced marches out of their land, internal exposure to smallpox, military battles, incarceration and attempted enslavement left only approximately 332,400 indigenous people alive.

The actual origin of the Thanksgiving holiday celebrated today came in 1637, when, after slaughtering 700 American Indian men, women and children, the Massachusetts Bay Colony decided to have an official holiday to give thanks for the "victory". This was the reward European invaders gave to Native Americans, led by Squanto, who taught them how to raise crops, especially corn, after at least half of the Pilgrims died during the harsh first winter. Native Americans believed in sharing their bounty as a way of life to a people they had pity for given the colonists' ineptitude in living off the land.

The genocide of Native American people actually started in 1492 with Christopher Columbus. Columbus was the first lie my teachers taught me. Teachers do not tell children he was the first American terrorist in the New World, slaughtering and beheading the people of the forest. This barbaric treatment of Native Americans continued until 1973, when the woodland people took their last stand. Today these proud people are dehumanized by sports nicknames like the Redskins, Warriors and Savages. Sadly, we not only committed genocide but also destroyed a great culture.

If that was not enough, I am against Thanksgiving because it ushers in the painful death of 45 million turkeys. In the worst kind of capital punishment, turkeys, after suffering in cramped quarters where heart attacks and suffocation are common, have their beaks and toes cut off sans anesthesia, then have their throats slit or are boiled alive while fully conscious.

Thanksgiving, more than any holiday, is also a testimony to the gluttony, hedonism and sloth that has become part of the American fabric while people in the Third World nations like Darfur starve.

I am a vegetarian. Meat eaters are nine times more likely to be obese than vegetarians. One half of the calories in turkey come from fat. By being a vegetarian not only do you save animal life, you have 40 percent of the cancer rate of carnivores and are 50 percent less likely to have heart disease.

I am not against gathering the family and being thankful to God for your great blessings. Next time be aware, however, of the true history of Thanksgiving, and pass on the turkey.

ROSS T. RUNFOLA, of Buffalo, is an attorney and a professor of sociology at Medaille College.