Celebrating Genocide – The Real Story of Thanksgiving

25th November 2015

By Irwin Ozborne

Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

Thanksgiving: Celebrating all that we have, and the genocide it took to get it.

Thanksgiving is one of the most paradoxical times of the year. We gather together with friends and family in celebration of all that we are thankful for and express our gratitude, at the same time we 

are encouraged to eat in excess. But the irony really starts the next day on Black Friday. On Thursday we appreciate all the simple things in life, such as having a meal, a roof over our head, and the connection with those close to us. But in less than 24 hours, we literally trample over others in a mad dash to accumulate as many material possessions as possible at bargain-prices.

So what is the true history of Thanksgiving? Well, just like we have stories of Easter in which a magical bunny hops around the world and hides baskets of goodies for us to find, or stories of Christmas where Santa Claus travels the globe in one night to leave presents under the tree for good boys and girls – Thanksgiving, too, has its traditional myth which we share with our children. We recount stories of the Indians and Pilgrims getting together for a magical feast of brotherly love and appreciation. The only problem is that, unlike the other holidays, we never reveal the truth about Thanksgiving to our children as they grow older. In fact, most of us don’t understand its bloody history ourselves…

The first actual proclaimed “Day of Thanksgiving” came in 1637 in a meeting between the Pequot Indians and English religious mercenaries. The Pequot were celebrating their annual Green Harvest Festival, which resembles modern-day Thanksgiving. On the eve of the festival, the English demanded that everyone comes out of their homes, puts their weapons on the ground, and surrenders by converting to Christianity.

Those who obliged with these terroristic demands were either shot dead or clubbed to death. Those who stayed inside their longhouses – including women and children – were burnt to death. In all, more than 700 Pequot men, women, and children were slaughtered that day.

The “victory” was celebrated by the Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony holding a feast and trumpeted this as a “Day of Thanksgiving.” During the celebration, they cut off heads of Natives and put them on display publicly; including beheading the Wampanoag Chief and impaling his head on a pole in Plymouth which stayed on display for the next 24 years.

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Previous articles by Irwin Ozborne:

• Licensed to Kill: Psychiatry, Big Pharma and the State-Sanctioned Drug Cartel
• The Craving Behind the Craving: Addiction as a Spiritual Disease
• Bipolar? Or Gifted? The Modern Day Epidemic of Medicated “Madness”
• Suicide: Falling Through the Cracks of Stigma
• The Fictions Surrounding ADHD and the “Chemical Imbalance” Theory of Mental Illness

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