Revisionist history

Happy Thanksgivin' - Y'All

I know "Gi' me that ole time religion" is the rallying cry of the cit'zins, but they don't quite get it right...and that's the way they like it, aha, aha.

The frenzy to identify and punish illegal aliens strikes me as a bit peculiar on Thanksgiving. Apparently when you're the illegal alien your justification is...what? Doing God's work? White-man's destiny? God's will?

For a bit of revisionist history from the Plimouth Plantation (those wild eyed radical terrorists in Plymouth, MA)

Some people call this revisionist history, saying it weighs too heavily on the “side” of the Native People or that it is too controversial. I would ask those people to look back at the textbooks from their elementary school or high school—perhaps even college days. There are patterns in the historical writing. One reads all about the Pilgrims bravely crossing the ocean to found a brand new country based on freedom, then comes the Revolutionary War, and then continued building of the new country, America. Where does one read about the Wampanoag? Where does one find what was going on with them while everything else was going on? Until very recently, when it came to textbooks and historical thinking, we existed only in the 17th century—when Squanto showed the Pilgrims how to plant corn, when Massasoit befriended the Pilgrims, and the “First Thanksgiving.” Often our existence was only mentioned in our relation to (or in the service of) the English. Readers and students of history have been left with the image that we went completely away.
In point of fact, we didn’t go anywhere. And most Wampanoag People still live right here in our original homeland alongside everyone else. For us there were not always easy times or good times. There were other epidemics (after the first most devastating one of 1616-1618 in which the Wampanoag lost approximately half of our population, conservatively estimated at 35,000 at that time), wars, still further encroachment and loss of land, demeaning treatment by those of other races, and systems that worked to our disadvantage and were completely the opposite of our traditional ways. It is not always a pleasant story, but it is nevertheless a true one. It happened. And on that basis alone, the story deserves to be told.
To tell our story—to add it back into the historical record—is seen as a negative thing by some. Reintroducing what should always have been included is seen as “changing” history. We are not trying to change history. It happened. Not telling what happened does not change the fact of its happening. What we would like to change are the attitudes that keep us in that place of omission; where one part or “side” of history is perceived as the whole. It is not just a matter of Wampanoag People having the opportunity to tell our “side” of the story. It is a matter that all of us see the history of the 17th century (or of any time period) holistically. There are no sides, but only one whole story. This then is what Thanksgiving: Memory, Myth & Meaning articulates and accomplishes with sensitivity. This is what gives the exhibit its unique qualities.

So Thanksgiving day celebrates a time when our forefathers were illegal aliens, courted the locals when it suited them, then killed them 54 years later.

The Thanksgiving legacy must be...illegal aliens can wipe out a culture; be afraid, be very afraid.

It's seems to be a true paranoid celebration.

Sure's a lot easier to close your eyes, raise your head, clap your hands and repeat after me: "Gi' me that old time religion, It's good enough for me."

God bless ya'.