Food for thought, for Thanksgiving

Maybe a little prayer should be added seeking forgiveness for the treatment of Native Americans by the majority Anglo society?

Thanks to Jay:

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

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Issue for Nov 26 - Dec 2, 2008. Published every Wednesday

What Happy Thanksgiving?
by Netfa Freeman

Black Americans should be among the last to celebrate Thanksgiving, a mythology that seeks to absolve white settlers of their intentional eradication of Native Americans. "African descendants in the US aren't primarily responsible for the theft of land or the genocide of indigenous people. But to insinuate that what happened and is still happening to indigenous Americans is a relic of the past makes one an accomplice." Thanksgiving encourages notions of American exceptionalism. "At the height of the Anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa , Americans had the audacity to claim a higher moral ground than the apartheid government."

What Happy Thanksgiving?
by Netfa Freeman

"Thanksgiving is literally the celebration of a massacre of a whole people."

There's nothing like one-o-them home cooked meals by Momma.

Just the thought of extended family getting together and partaking in the bonding ritual of a feast, is enough to bring a nostalgic tear to the eye. And when something becomes a tradition it can be hard to break from, even if its roots prove to be decadent and warped.

Even though many African people (any person of African descent) in the United States know not to recognize Columbus Day, we have yet to renounce Thanksgiving and we neglect its true historical significance. Who can deny that Columbus was nothing more than a colonial pirate who stumbled, lost and starving, onto the shores of this continent? He would have certainly perished if it weren't for his indigenous rescuers, whom he repaid with plunder, pillage and enslavement.

We take comfort in knowing that he wasn't from Africa, and that the likes of him committed in essence the same assault on Africa . But doesn't Thanksgiving have the same decadent origins? How absurd is it for Black people/Africans to recognize Thanksgiving as anything other than a "celebration in the taking."

In discussions about why African-"Americans" can honor this tradition of forgotten origins it is common to hear proclamations about how it has now become "a time for family and friends; a time to be thankful for the blessings in our lives." After all, what purpose does it serve to dwell on the past?

" Columbus was nothing more than a colonial pirate."
Consider this, African people. Someone murders a family and is demented enough to commemorate the atrocity, declaring it a thankful occasion. As years go by the offspring of the murderers-who have since all died-invite you to also give thanks on this occasion, while the survivors are never given the opportunity to have closure or redress. Everyone encourages them that this should now become a thankful time and for them to forgive and forget the historical truth behind the occasion.

Maybe we don't realize that Thanksgiving is literally the celebration of a massacre of a whole people. This is shown as a 1623 Thanksgiving sermon in Plymouth Massachusetts "gave special thanks to God for the devastating plague of smallpox that destroyed the majority of the Wampanoag Indians. He praised God for eliminating "chiefly young men and children, the very seeds of increase, thus clearing the forests to make way for a better growth.'" (Dr. Felipe de Ortego y Gasca, Thanksgiving in America, November 1991) The smallpox was intentionally passed to the Wampanoag, one of the earliest perpetrations of biological warfare.

Maybe African descendants in the US aren't primarily responsible for the theft of land or the genocide of indigenous people. But to insinuate that what happened and is still happening to indigenous Americans is a relic of the past makes one an accomplice.

It is not in the past that our indigenous sisters and brothers are still oppressed, still having land taken from them, and still experiencing "treaties" being broken.

It's not in some distant past that Native Americans are being subjected to all the symptoms of oppression: disease, homelessness, dilapidated and vermin-infested housing, substance abuse, inadequate education, unemployment, and police brutality. One of their freedom fighters, Leonard Peltier has languished as a political prisoner for nearly 30 years; framed in events provoked by an assault on Native people by the FBI.

"Smallpox was intentionally passed to the Wampanoag, one of the earliest perpetrations of biological warfare."
If our history of slavery as African people and the continued racist contempt for us still shows how far we have to go, then the settler-colonialist legacy and continued racist contempt for the fundamental human rights of North America's Indigenous people bears on the civic responsibilities of anyone who claims to be American.

We have no right to claim a land that is not ours no matter how much we worked and slaved to build it. This is especially true for those in the US who do not incorporate support for Indigenous people into the struggle for their own rights.

Malcolm X taught us that land is the material basis of all political and economic power for any people. When you take away someone's land, you take away his or her entire source of livelihood and right to sovereignty. We must recognize we reside here at the expense of our Native American sisters and brothers.

We even owe them a historical debt for often providing us with the only real refuge from slavery when some of us were able to escape. They have had their land stolen from them and we were stolen from our land. But if we are to stay and struggle here in America , then we should only do it in deference to them. We are obliged to speak out on their behalf on every platform, in every venue, at every opportunity before we ever make claims to this land, or better yet invite them to speak out for themselves.

How would we feel if the Boers of South Africa had proclaimed the Sharpsville Massacre as an event to celebrate with a "thanksgiving" ?

Doesn't the fact that America is as great as it is due to contributions --involuntary and otherwise-- from African people mean we have earned a piece of the pie?

"We reside here at the expense of our Native American sisters and brothers."
Consider this simple analogy. Let's say someone kidnaps you from your house. They take you to invade another person's house, abusing that person and locking them in the closet. After kidnapping you from your home and invading this other house you are kept to serve your captor and to help renovate this "new" house. Eventually your captor "grants" you freedom and allows you some nominal access to this new house. But-whose house is it really?

When the issue of America being stolen land is brought into discussions about African-American claims to this nation, it is common to be reminded by the establishment in the following manner: "We weren't the ones who stole it and the past is past and nothing can be done about it now."

We know how these discussions go. We've engaged in countless numbers of them. In our attempts to rehabilitate the integrity of African people in America and the world, we still have a long way to go.

We fought to institutionalize a Black History Month to counter the omissions and misrepresentations of us in America 's history. We've researched and published about the multitude of scientific and technological contributions our great minds have given to this and other societies. We have won affirmative action legislation and many of us have ascended social, economic and political ladders to become sport and Hollywood celebrities, corporate CEOs, mayors and congresspersons, etc.

However, we don't feel that we have the same obligation that white people have to recognize and act in practical solidarity with the dispossessed indigenous people of the Americas . Somehow our struggles have absolved us of all responsibility to work for true reparations for their plight.

"Whose house is it really?
We gotta keep it real, people. Our "American" hands don't seem so clean when we consider the history of some things we often regard with pride. While it's accepted that the Buffalo Soldiers did not participate in the massacres of Native Americans, they were still employed in "keeping the peace," building forts on reservations, making sure Native Americans stayed in reservations, and protecting white settlements. How many of us proudly display portraits depicting Buffalo soldiers in our homes or workplaces?

At the height of the Anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa , Americans had the audacity to claim a higher moral ground than the apartheid government. Even many Africans in America spoke out loudly of how backward South Africa was and how the US government and multi-national corporations doing business there should realize the disrespect to all people of African descent.

Apartheid was even compared to the Jim Crow laws we were subjected to in America , which were presented as an ugly "past." Many of us saw and see America as having moved beyond the U.S. version of apartheid.

As Jesse Jackson put it on July 18, 1984 at the Democratic National Convention, in San Francisco : "From Fannie Lou Hamer in Atlantic City in 1964 to the Rainbow Coalition in San Francisco today; from the Atlantic to the Pacific, we have experienced pain but progress as we ended America 's apartheid laws."

"Indian reservations have severely limited powers and as a result are subjected to severely limited justice."
But how could this be? It isn't even a perfect analogy. We are not indigenous to this land and are more equivalent in status to the so-called "coloreds" in South Africa . Our struggle and claims in North America do not speak to the nature of settler-colonialism as they do in South Africa . We conveniently overlook the real analogy here, the real disgraceful similarities between the US and South Africa . America makes a mockery of the meaning of democracy. An honest look at South Africa concedes that, while statues and laws have been abolished that enforced that system of racist segregation and deprivation of human rights; serious remnants of the inequality it sustained still persist. In North America , however, the situation of indigenous people has not even transcended to that level. The US ' form of apartheid can still be found.

In its strict sense the term apartheid originates from the Afrikaans (Boer language in South Africa ) word meaning "apartness" and in 1948 became the official name of the South African system of racial segregation. As South Africa is clearly not the only place in the world to practice such a system, the form it takes in other places of the world varies and contrary to what most people are led to believe is still practiced in the US against Indigenous people.

For example, Indian reservations are permitted a pseudo autonomy within the United States . While many have their own police forces, courts, and jails, they have severely limited powers and as a result are subjected to severely limited justice. One feature of these limitations is the fact that the federal government has the sole authority to investigate and prosecute almost all felonies. A recent story by The Denver Post exposed how this results in gross neglect of Native American victims of serious crimes and how Indian reservations are the only places in the US where the race of the perpetrators and/or that of the victims determines who has jurisdiction to handle cases.

"Our mutual oppression should mean a natural alliance between us."
Narrator for an episode of Bill Moyer's Journal, Sylvia Chase explains, "If a felony in Indian country involves two non-Indians, it is tried in state court. However, if either the assailant or the victim is an Indian, neither the state nor the tribe has jurisdiction. The crime must be tried in federal court." This particular feature of US apartheid has its roots in mutations of the Major Crimes Act passed by congress in 1885, which stipulates that major crimes committed by Indians in Indian country have to be tried in federal court.

With Native Americans still statutorily being deprived of their human rights, there should be no surprise why America gives so much support to the settler-colonial state of Israel . It is no different than Israel . They sympathize with Israeli settlers over the natural land and other human rights of the indigenous Palestinians.

Maybe the reason why Black people in this country don't want to give all due respect to the Native Americans is because they are afraid it might, in theory, mean moving back to Africa . The comforts some of us have come to associate with America just aren't home in Africa . Although, some of us here in America still suffer so that we honestly wouldn't see much difference between our state of underdevelopment in Africa versus that in America . Yes, there are living conditions in the US for both Indigenous and people of African descent that are tantamount to what are often referred to as "third world" conditions.

So, if anything, our mutual oppression should mean a natural alliance between us and our Indigenous sisters and brothers. An alliance, that we would be unjust to pay only lip service. We need to say loudly to them that Africa, not America remains our only legitimate homeland.

Netfa Freeman is the director of the Social Action & Leadership School for Activists at the Institute for Policy Studies. Mr. Freeman is a longtime activist in the Pan-African and international human rights movements and is also a co-producer/ co-host for Voices With Vision, WPFW 89.3 FM, Washington DC . He can be reached at http://us.mc812.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=netfa@hotsalsa.org This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

The end

Posted on Reznews: November 26, 2008http://us.mc812.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=Reznews-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
By: Larry Kibby - http://us.mc812.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=lkibby1@citlink.net
Elko Indian Colony, Nevada Larry Kibby - American Indian Poetryhttp://www.freewebs.com/lkibby1/index.htm