Every Thanksgiving Day we are asked
to bow our heads give thanks to God for all that we have. For many years I have
wondered exactly what America as a nation has to be grateful for on
Thanksgiving Day. Here’s a partial list I’ve identified.
·
We are thankful that the indigenous peoples who
occupied the area now known as North America were susceptible to the many diseases
carried by the first European invaders and died by the millions when exposed to
them, leaving tribes throughout the continent weak and ineffectual defenders of
their lands and peoples.
·
We are thankful for President Andrew Jackson,
who intentionally violated the U.S. Constitution when he defied a U.S. Supreme
Court ruling, seizing nearly seven hundred thousand square miles of indigenous
tribal land stretching from the East Coast to the Mississippi River and beyond,
forcibly removing hundreds of thousands of native peoples against their will (an
early example of brutally efficient government-driven ethnic cleansing) to
today’s Oklahoma, leaving behind little more than cultural misappropriation, offensive
stereotypes, and ghost-like indigenous names: Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky,
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, and
Arkansas.
·
We are thankful that our indigenous peoples,
even the most hostile, were unlike the newly minted Americans, who proved
themselves to be rapacious charlatans and skilled liars who used official treaties
to coerce and swindle tribes of their land and livelihoods.
·
We are thankful for Congress that crafted
hundreds of treaties with native tribes and then unilaterally broke them whenever
it benefited greedy, land-demanding American settlers.
·
We are thankful that the huge stainless steel Arch
in St. Louis, marking the Gateway to the West and memorializing Westward
Expansion, reminds us that all the lands we now live on were once those of
indigenous tribes we brutally shoved aside without compunction or twinge of conscience.
·
We are eternally thankful that the vast majority
of Americans today identify the day after Thanksgiving only as Black Friday and
not as the National American Indian Heritage Day it is officially because, to be brutally honest, a booming economy is hugely more important to Americans than honoring
once savage redskins.
·
But, most of all, we are thankful that
indigenous peoples did not recognize the enormous peril posed by the first
Europeans who invaded their lands and never united as a collective dedicated to
the merciless slaughter of the invaders.
Yes, dear Lord, we are eternally
grateful for the many blessings you have bestowed on this great nation and offer
our prayerful thanks. Now, let’s eat that fat turkey. And don’t forget to pass
the cranberries. Burrrrrp.
Written on Thanksgiving evening,
11-22-18.
