Harvest Festival

My paramour Pam
a native of this great land
whom I think is grand

I don't give any thanks today.

For non-North American readers: today is a national holiday called Thanksgiving, which many Red-White-and-Blue (read: Republican-Caucasian-and-Bluecollar) citizens celebrate by giving thanks to an invisible creator-deity for bestowing them with the wonderful land on which they have formed a country. When they give thanks, they blithely fail to recognize the uncounted millions of murders and deaths their ancestors committed and orchestrated to "clear the land" of the indigenous people that previously occupied it. When I attempted to discuss this with my mother, she replied, tersely, "I don't choose to think of it in that manner." Way to go mom; way to stick to your ancestors guns. (There's a joke in there.)

The woman I love is of the Tohono O'Odham nation (pronounced: Toe-OH-no OhOh-dAHme). Although I've never been comfortable celebrating many, or most, holidays—especially those usurped by religious nutters (who I call 'prazy folk')—I find the thought of celebrating North American Thanksgiving (or Columbus Day)...both lovingly referred-to in our house as: indigenous death days...like a Brit celebrating US Independence Day, the French celebrating Cinco de Mayo, or an Aboriginal native celebrating Australia Day.

Bottom line: It isn't always a party when the bully wins.

Teachers of children in the United States of America wrote this date on blackboards again and again, and asked the children to memorize it with pride and joy: 1492. The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them. — Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions (1973)
thanksgiving, harvest festival, don't celebrate, indigenous death day, 1492