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American Indian offers view of Thanksgiving
The Advocate
Thanksgiving is the one American holiday dedicated to the blending of two cultures, the white settlers from England and Europe and the American Indians.
Being an American Indian, I grew up being told stories from grandmothers about how things were in the old days. How when they were little they were forced to learn the “white man’s” way by being converted to Christianity, and being sent to boarding schools where they were forced to learn English instead of the language of our people.
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| Anevay Torrez |
In addition to attending boarding school, they were also forced to cut their long hair. But in the American Indian culture, a person’s hair is very important because it is a symbol of your culture and how in some American Indian cultures when a close family member dies it is respectful to cut your hair. Having been forced to do all of these things, my grandmas and their grandmas felt like everything they knew and loved was being taken away from them slowly but surely.
In my family, our tradition for Thanksgiving is to have all the family together and have dinner just like any other American family, but with a little twist. If my grandma is over for dinner, before we start she will bless the food in native language and then every year there is always a Thanksgiving Powwow for the whole community.
This generation of American Indians has gotten too involved in new age things. That’s why it’s nice to go back home and be able to be with grandparents who can keep me grounded and keep me involved in our culture.
That’s why it’s important to know about the past so it won’t happen again in the future. I wonder what it would be like if my ancestors had been left to their ways and traditions and had not been conformed to what others thought to be the right way to do things.
Everyone knows about Thanksgiving and the first dinner that the pilgrims and American Indians shared together. No one sees what really happened, but the older generation does. Some of the older generations think that was when the American Indian people slowly started to lose the great land that they had spent years taking care of so carefully. This is why celebrating Thanksgiving is a little different for me and my family.
For my family and me, Thanksgiving is when we can give thanks for everything in our lives that we appreciate having. After my grandpa died about five years ago, right before Thanksgiving, I think that changed everything including what we now think is important, especially family and culture, because how can you get anywhere if you don’t know where you’ve come from.
It’s nice to have a sense of my family’s culture with me and know what things used to be like for my grandparents and their parents. It’s important to realize that I’m thankful for them being my family and thanks to them I have a great life knowing that instead of having to lose things like they did, I can gain more sense of my family’s culture from them.
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