The Thanksgiving holiday is a happy time for pretty much everyone, but that will change if the Seattle public school district gets its way. The District's "director of Equity, Race & Learning Support"--there's a position that you can tell, just from the title, should be eliminated--sent a letter to teachers urging them to instruct their students in the "myths" of Thanksgiving.

The "myths" are a means of teaching students, among other things, that the Pilgrims were "rigid fundamentalists" who "egregiously" stole Indian lands and "massacred" Indians. Here is the final "myth":

Myth #11: Thanksgiving is a happy time.

Fact: For many Indian people, “Thanksgiving” is a time of mourning, of remembering how a gift of generosity was rewarded by theft of land and seed corn, extermination of many from disease and gun, and near total destruction of many more from forced assimilation. As currently celebrated in this country, “Thanksgiving” is a bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for friendship.

This is, obviously, a one-sided recounting of the history of white and Indian peoples; to import it into Thanksgiving is simply perverse. The Fox report linked to above quotes an Indian whose comments are eminently sensible:

But one Seattle-area tribe says Thanksgiving is not somber on the reservation but a time to see friends and family, as it is for other Americans.

Native Americans in the Northwest celebrate the holiday with turkey and salmon, said Daryl Williams of the Tulalip Tribes. Before the period of bitter and violent relationships between natives and their culturally European counterparts, they worked together to survive, he said.

"The spirit of Thanksgiving, of people working together to help each other, is the spirit I think that needs to grow in this country, because this country has gotten very divisive," he said.

It is hard to understand how Seattle's "director of Equity, Race & Learning Support" thinks she is doing Native American children a favor by urging them to adopt a resentful, oppositionist attitude toward the Thanksgiving holiday.

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Posted by John at 12:40 PM  |    |