No. I don't think of you in any terms currently except the above. I am totally apathetic as to what religion or origin you have. Again, emotionlessly and bloodlessly, move on. Speak of your fridge or your child; isn't that what Thread Central is supposed to (not not) be about?
Same here as I guess I should have not associated you with an upbringing in the Mideast. I should have just pointed out you are one angry guy or gal. I don't know what brought you to such a state, but hope I never have to engage you in a conversation at a cocktail party.
If we're so intellectually impoverished why do you force yourself and your issues into this architectural forum - is it a magnanimous act of generosity on your part intended to enlighten us poor dumb animals? Thank you so very much!
You couldn't possibly be as much of an asshole in real life as you are here because nobody would tolerate it. Or maybe you are and after being beaten to a toothless pulp all you can do is talk anonymous shit on the 'net from some cupboard you're hiding in.
Not that I care one way or the other, I just enjoy speculating.
I was clearly talking to snooker and comment was adressed to him. Not everyone. But trust you to be dishonest, Miles.
And a low life thug if all you can think about is my getting beaten up. You too, your fridge, your child? Or do you also beat them up to a pulp?
I'm still scratching my head about being a bigot....Wandering what the heck brought this on.... my general understanding that there are cultural differences between people. Something I acknowledge but don't think is bad. I think you might be surprised at my upbringing, people I have served, people I have gone to bat for.
The only people I have dislike are those who don't hold up their in of a financial obligation. Then I can be a real thorn in someones side. Oh ya, it doesn't make any difference who they are where they come from.
I have friends from all walks of life and don't ever recall anyone calling me a bigot. Hope we have cleared up that issue.
tammuz, you of all people should know it's an open public forum. You want to have a more private conversation, use email.
Still wondering why you bother with all of us intellectually impoverished animals ... but you only respond to the parts that you can twist out of shape. LOL
This is so disgusting. Provoking a person and blaming him for aggression. All the accolades should go the other way around.
Upon reading the posts as I did, you will realize tammuz did not originate this filthy circle jerk nor he has intended to. Whether you know it or not, some of the responses are racist to the core disguised as general consensus. In fact, tammuz is the sane one here...
Miles, aren't you "emailing" me here? As for twisted, there's nothing more twisted than a bitter petty adult, hypocritical and self righteous, who LOLs (indeed, no adult should LOL. Hehe or the spanish jaja are more excusable).
Snooker, its like you're the bigotted version of that girl in that movie, 50 First Dates, spewing bigotry then acting as if you didn't.
Also wishing you the best in Sunny California! We are in the midst of our first winter hit, so things are slow....guess I should go find something else to waste my time on.
I have no hard feeling about tammuz. I'm a rather thick skinned old desert rat who got lost somewhere along the way and ended up in New England surrounded by a bunch of Yankees!
Ok well I'm just not going to read any of that. Can you all just STOP posting anything? don't respond to whatever slight you perceive, just move on. Thank you!
Sarah, I'm very very sorry to hear about your father. Hospice can be a nice time of togetherness however - here's hoping that's what it is for you and your family. Oddly enough, planning a funeral (including the obit) can actually be a nice little project to do together - you'd be surprised at the stories and conversations it can provoke. I remember my grandfather picking out his hymns and telling us why he chose them each.
Like everyone else, I found Joan Didion's book on the year she lost her husband to be a very moving walk through grief. You might like it - it's called The Year of Magical Thinking.
Snooker, that was a very sad happening but you know what I mean and you know that you're posting this story cynically.
I am not saying you would be consciously celebrating the ethnic cleansing of the native american people...but this day of all days should be declared a somber day of remembrance ...not an occasion to give thanks based in a history of deceipt, theft and ethnic cleansing.
I wish you good days, since you had good intentions in your wish...but never a good 'Thanksgiving' day
You call snook the cynic. The purpose of thanksgiving is not to attack Native Americans. Your life must be horribly negative. You can't even celebrate a holiday where the sole purpose is to be thankful for your life and everything in it? Do you always have to be so politically correct? You have another thread to go take a crap in. Go away, shoo! Shoo!
Its not about political correctness. Look at it from the native indian perspective. Its about being honest about history, sensitive to those who carry with them its burdens and were its victims. But obviously you lack sensitivity. Funny, you speaking about idiocy and the lack of intelligence....as if you knew what that meant. Stupid, insensitive and maladroit., these qualities would approximate you more.
tammuz....nope not cynically. I just want to let you know there are two sides of the coin. There were also people out there Non Native American, being sure Indians were not starving back in the day. My ancestors let a few cattle go missing because they knew someone was going to live thru another long winter. People came to my great grand mothers kitchen dressed in deer skin, and she gave them apple pie. There was never any feeling of us verse them.
I spent my informative years on the reservation. It is not a pretty situation. I had a teenage kid come at me with a knife, I took it away from him in a struggle. His elder was glad I did, cause he knew if it was someone else there might not have been a second chance.
One of my best high school friends, passed away a couple of years ago. He was a Lakota medicine man. I have always cherished our friendship.
So in closing everyday is Thanksgiving Day for me. Glad to be alive and glad to do positive things for people!
To continue along on the important subject here, I've found Christopher Hitchens' last book "Mortality" (written from his death bed as he battled cancer) is perfect.
TAM, the only thing you're accomplished with your last dozen posts is to confirm what everyone already expected from you. There is not enough Guinness available to drown away your pedestrian sloganistic views.
Snooker, a few personal anecdotes do not wipe away the scale of ethic cleansing carried out by the colonists, as much as you would like to relativize violence that came from both directions in order to feel happy about your turkey. The historical fact is that Thanksgiving, for the Native Americans, is a reminder of the massacres that were committed against them on their homeland by people who came to usurp their land . "...many American Indians today call Thanksgiving a "Day of Mourning".
So, talk to me all you want about how you have Native Indian friends and cite as many discrete events as you like to prove that there is violence directed the other way, fact is, your Thanksgiving, for many many Americans of Native American origin, is a slap in the face, showing how insensitive and willingly amnesiac one part of this nation-colony is towards another. An account:
The colonists were contemptuous of the Indians, who they regarded as uncivilized and satanic heathens, and the fragile early peace between Native Americans and the early settlers would soon unravel in a horrific manner in what is now Mystic Connecticut, where the Pequot tribe was celebrating their own Thanksgiving, the green corn festival. In the predawn hours, settlers-- not the Pilgrims, but a band of Puritans-- descended on their village and shot, clubbed and burned alive over 700 native men, woman and children.
This slaughter, according to Robert Jensen, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, was the real origin of Thanksgiving-- so proclaimed in 1637 by Massachusetts Bay Governor John Winthrop in gratitude for God's destruction of the defenseless Pequot village. Thereafter massacres of the Indians were routinely followed by "days of thanksgiving."
One of the saddest things I have observed in Canada - supposedly more demure and considerate than its southern neighbouring colony-nation- is the dire conditions of the autocthones , the native Canadians (who suffer from severe drink and drug use and have the highest suicide rates) . All of this they owe to a history...they did not just come to be without any explanation or context, even while the racists look down at them for not having a bourgeois life. All this suggests to me that those colony-countries were not able to resolve the pathological consequences of those weed-like roots of their foundation that had chocked off the autochthonous civilizations (the Canaans they thought their God had given them the right to eliminate).
So, the fact that you "give thanks" on a day where the very reason for your giving thanks constitutes one for the native americans to commemorate a day of mourning is callous and selfish of you. It is a cruel imperial obstinacy that propels Americans to still celebrate Thanksgiving.
Tammuz, I'm surprised you even have a life. I'm surprised that you even find interest in Archinect. You pretty much dislike everything. You're so cynical, that it's ridiculous. Go hermit yourself away somewhere, so we dot have to listen to your distorted views on literally everything.
Thanksgiving has never been a celebratory holiday in my family. Whenever my family did cook we always gave thanks that all the Native Americans weren't wiped out when Columbus "discovered" America. I never understood why my family was so against Thanksgiving. In school we drew turkeys with our hands and it was a happy time. It meant a couple of days off from school. My teachers made it seem like Thanksgiving was a holiday to look forward to. The New York City public education system told me what Thanksgiving was all about. I was very careful to regurgitate what they taught me when tested so I wouldn't get a failing grade. When I was older though I was told the truth by my family.
(...)I learned that in 1637 the body of a white man was discovered dead in a boat. Armed settlers -- which we tell our children were God fearing, gentle, sharing, kind Pilgrims -- invaded a Pequot village. They also set the village, which included many children, on fire. Those who were lucky enough to escape the fire were systematically sought, hunted down and killed. While many, including historians, still debate what exactly happened this day, also known as the Pequot Massacre, it directly led to the creation of "Thanksgiving Day." This is what the governor of Bay Colony had to say days after the massacre, "A day of thanksgiving. Thanking God that they had eliminated over 700 men, women and children."
(...) People always tell me to forget the past. I should just let it go and move on. Why do people of color always have to forget?! Would you tell a Jewish person to forget about the holocaust and just move on?! Would you tell the family of those who lost their lives on 9/11 to just forget about it?! So why are our tragedies forgettable and others are not?! I WILL NEVER forget! I will ALWAYS honor those who lost their lives unjustifiable.
So when you sit down to dinner this year, look at your family, serve the food and tell each other what you are most thankful for, think about the origins of Thanksgiving. Think about the countless Native Americans who lost their lives so you can carve a turkey and get the best deals on Black Friday. Say a prayer for them, especially the children, who died simply because of the color of their skin."
I believe i get the day off for thanksgiving because Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the day a holiday, not Columbus. celebrating harvests and giving thanks for things you're grateful for predates Columbus by a long time. Choosing to see this day as something about "colonialism" is your choice. I suppose if you have nothing to be thankful for, you might as well use the day as an excuse to tell those that are thankful why you think your racism is justifiable.
Happy thanksgiving thread central, and happy day for people not celebrating today. Every day is a good for turkey and go lions!
That is not why we celebrate Thanksgiving. We don't celebrate Thanksgiving to celebrate the massacre of Native Americans. We celebrate it to be thankful for what we have. To those Native Americans that celebrate Thanksgiving for what it is, good for you! For you Tammuz, you NEED to celebrate it for what it is NOW.
Again, I do not celebrate a day which -not coincidentally -marks the day of a genocide. There is much more selfless value to be had in commemorating this day for the native Indians - and would show that you do live in the same country with the same history based on historical facts and mutual respect- than does a self-centric hocus pocus that only underlines how obstinate your egotistical arguments for it are, how inconsiderate you are to the descendants of the victims and how schizophrenic/ in denial of history you are simply in order to make you feel fuzzier and happier at the expense of other's discontent.
"Defenders of Thanksgiving will say that whatever the original murky meaning of the holiday, it has become a rare chance to spend time with family and show appreciation for what one has. For most Americans today, however, it is hard to be thankful. As matter of fact, unless you belong to the 2 percent who represent the US ruling class you should not be thankful at all. How can you be appreciative for what you have if you have lost your house to foreclosure, don’t have a job and can’t feed your family? How can you be appreciative if you are a homeless veteran? How can you be appreciative when you are poor or sick in a society without social justice? On this Thanksgiving day, rich celebrities and politicians will make a parody of what should be real charity by feeding countless poor and homeless. This will ease their conscience, at least for a while. Charity, however, should not be a substitute for social justice. Just to ruin some people’s appetites before they attack that golden turkey: keep in mind that today we are celebrating a genocide."
Of course, what I think is that one should listen to what they think, the ones who descend from a really history of suffering, not to the result of growing up on lies and tailored "history". Naturally, the likes of you would not care what I think. A turkey marking a meaningless hocus pocus day for you, a self centric banality that you could easily do away with, is more important to you than the feelings and well being of a whole communities of other people.
Here is a very moving article on the subject (the whole thing is really worth reading)
"Yet after the "Thanksgiving" holiday was coined and continues to be celebrated based on a story that does not include factual Native American history, "Thanksgiving" has become a time of mourning for many Native People. It serves as a period of remembering how a gift of generosity was rewarded by theft of land and seed corn, extermination of many Native people from disease, and near total elimination of many more from forced assimilation. As celebrated in America "Thanksgiving" is a reminder of 500 years of betrayal.
I'm within the assemblage of American Indians whose family and Native friends celebrates Thanksgiving. But our focus is not on pilgrims. We don't turn their lives topsy-turvy by making lengthy lists of things needing to be done for what has come to be known as Turkey Day. We aren't in the throng of those who go commercial in the planning and then grumble about the fanfare involved. Our celebration is deep-rooted in the simple tradition of honoring, remembering our ancestors, our history, with a focus on celebrating the harvest. We feast and pray for the healing to begin. Our thoughts turn to the Wampanoag people.
Each year when the platters of cracked corn, green-chile turkey soup and the pies are brought out, I remember my grandmother's words. "Child," she said, "We're Indians, our culture has been scattered into odds and bits, yet Indian People are determined to keep our life ways alive."
Since no one knows when the "first" thanksgiving occurred, if it were up to me, I'd dedicate the entire month of November focusing on National Native American Heritage, to teach the rich histories of Native Peoples, and I'd let the pilgrims have a day all of their own, in December."
And I invite my American colleagues to commemorate the memory of the Native Indian peoples on the day in lieu of this ritual of "Thanksgiving" (in itself a perverted and usurped celebration) reenacting events related to the massacres of these people.
Happy Thanksgiving - the celebration of a bountiful harvest shared with family and friends - to all. The best way to give thanks for what we have is to share it with those who don't.
Those that scraped the fire were slaine with the sword; some hewed to peeces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatchte, and very few escapted. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyer, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweete sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enimie.
Bradford’s estimates proved low, and it is now believed that as many as 700 Pequot died that day, most of them women and children. In the aftermath of the siege, survivors were hunted down and slain or sold into slavery, amounting to what was, for all intents and purposes, an ethnic cleansing of the tribe. The English even went so far as to outlaw the name “Pequot.” (The tribe held on by a thread, and today there are approximately 1,500 members living in southeastern, Connecticut.) For decades after the Pequot Massacre, annual religious ceremonies and thanksgiving fast days were dedicated to its memory. (Thanksgiving was made an official federal holiday in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln, less than a year after he authorized what remains to this day the nation’s largest ever mass execution — the hanging of 38 Sioux men in Mankato, Minnesota in December 1862.)
In his book New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians 1620-1675, the historian Alden T. Vaughan called the Pequot War a game changer that had a “profound” effect on the nature of English-Native American relations:
Overnight the balance of power had shifted from the populous but unorganized natives to the English colonies. The destruction of the Pequots cleared away the only major obstacle to Puritan expansion. And the thoroughness of that destruction made a deep impression on the other tribes.
Since 1970, Native Americans have gathered every Thanksgiving around Cole’s Hill at Plymouth Rock for a National Day of Mourning to remember the Pequot and what happened to them in 1637. This Thanksgiving, before we dig into the bounty this nation has given us, let’s all take a moment to mourn with them and remember that there are two sides to every story.
anything in there about the comanche attempted extermination of the lipan apache? anything about comanche selling captured enemy native americans to the spanish? anything about the origin of the name comanche which derives from the ute word kimantsi which means enemy? custer had crow scouts who hated the sioux. previous to this there were the beaver wars involving iroquois. yes a great ethnic cleansing took place and it shouldn't be forgotten and replaced with football and pie. but to think that all the indians got along great in some edenlike paradise is naive. history is cruel. history is displacement.
Miles, it might be. If so, I definitively took a chance with the office web-filter searching for that image.
On another note, I'm overhearing a conference call at the moment where the discussion is all about anti-gravity yoga and how to properly support the hoops and hammocks on the ceiling joists. Some people have all the fun.
for what purpose do you add the above? I mean, there was nothing in those articles to suggest that the Native Americans were living in an eden devoid of strife or war between themselves (in fact, it is exactly this that helped the colonists in their misadventures in the Americans - for instance, between with the feuds between the Perquots and the Mohegans as tools in the Dutch-English struggle for dominance [as mentioned in one of the above articles] or the Iroquois and the Algonquin as tools in the British-French struggle for dominance( side note: some French Canadians think that they were better for the locals than the British, possibly in order to find higher moral grounds ). Nothing you added contradicts but rather sidetracks to create a false parallel to amoralize colonialism and its effects on the native Indians.
Wars happen all the time between any groups of people and inside any group of people, I agree. And, most times, it is a very complicated historical array of causes for which both sides are responsible or for which one side is more responsible than the other.
However, colonialism is, without doubt, a one sided project. Colonialism, with the intention of eliminating the rightful owners of land, ways of lives, etc, or with the intention of soaking up the riches of one people in order to siphon it off either to the growing colony or to the imperial headquarters is a superlative evil that is above all domestic disputes between the local people and the corruption or greed that might have pushed elements of those local people to align themselves with the one or more of the imperial powers in a complicated game of control and self survival.
Does any of this mitigate from what the responsibility of a modern contemporary nation that professes a belief in human rights yada yada to recognize for once and for all that it is built on a holocaust - the disappearing- of Indian peoples and cultures by the colonists? Does it mitigate from the responsibility for recognition through, for example, declaring a day of remembrance and commemoration instead one of usurped and usurping "thanksgiving".
No, history is not about displacement, although displacement might occur within history. History is defined by half conscious and half unconscious forces at play ( I am rephrasing the anthropologist Maurice Godelier), history cannot happen without the conscious elements of human civilizations - as it also is subject to the unconscious (epistemological and material) limits of those civilizations.
What that means is, that, especially at this point of history, when we consider that the rights and well being of all humans are sacrosanct and that we are all equal - a conscious part of your current stage of history attained through rationality and an evolution of ethical thought (and that is not exclusive to any one people) - one must recognize the evil that was and is colonialism and that this past history has had a disastrous effect on the Native American peoples that is evident today and to recognize this, realistically and symbolically.
This, rather that to try and defend it (or robbing it of all meaning) by exiting out of history altogether (and making such claims as : "history is about displacement") and finding a rather cowardly ethical exit from responsibility.
It is not (imperial) might that makes right, and you must make a choice between being just and fair ...or thinking that its quite ok to rob land and kill others because some of them fight amongst themselves and that its ok to lie to oneself and consider that this was marked by a day of kindness and fuzzy feelings amongst all...all the while hurting the descendants of that other community more.
Thread Central
No. I don't think of you in any terms currently except the above. I am totally apathetic as to what religion or origin you have. Again, emotionlessly and bloodlessly, move on. Speak of your fridge or your child; isn't that what Thread Central is supposed to (not not) be about?
tammuz,
Same here as I guess I should have not associated you with an upbringing in the Mideast. I should have just pointed out you are one angry guy or gal. I don't know what brought you to such a state, but hope I never have to engage you in a conversation at a cocktail party.
I'm not an animal in your impoverished zoo.
If we're so intellectually impoverished why do you force yourself and your issues into this architectural forum - is it a magnanimous act of generosity on your part intended to enlighten us poor dumb animals? Thank you so very much!
You couldn't possibly be as much of an asshole in real life as you are here because nobody would tolerate it. Or maybe you are and after being beaten to a toothless pulp all you can do is talk anonymous shit on the 'net from some cupboard you're hiding in.
Not that I care one way or the other, I just enjoy speculating.
I was clearly talking to snooker and comment was adressed to him. Not everyone. But trust you to be dishonest, Miles. And a low life thug if all you can think about is my getting beaten up. You too, your fridge, your child? Or do you also beat them up to a pulp?
I'm still scratching my head about being a bigot....Wandering what the heck brought this on.... my general understanding that there are cultural differences between people. Something I acknowledge but don't think is bad. I think you might be surprised at my upbringing, people I have served, people I have gone to bat for.
The only people I have dislike are those who don't hold up their in of a financial obligation. Then I can be a real thorn in someones side. Oh ya, it doesn't make any difference who they are where they come from.
I have friends from all walks of life and don't ever recall anyone calling me a bigot. Hope we have cleared up that issue.
tammuz, you of all people should know it's an open public forum. You want to have a more private conversation, use email.
Still wondering why you bother with all of us intellectually impoverished animals ... but you only respond to the parts that you can twist out of shape. LOL
Miles...you getting snow or rain?
This is so disgusting. Provoking a person and blaming him for aggression. All the accolades should go the other way around.
Upon reading the posts as I did, you will realize tammuz did not originate this filthy circle jerk nor he has intended to. Whether you know it or not, some of the responses are racist to the core disguised as general consensus. In fact, tammuz is the sane one here...
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Snook, stay out of it my friend, it is not like you. And I wish you well with the medical situation and send my best wishes.
Miles, aren't you "emailing" me here? As for twisted, there's nothing more twisted than a bitter petty adult, hypocritical and self righteous, who LOLs (indeed, no adult should LOL. Hehe or the spanish jaja are more excusable). Snooker, its like you're the bigotted version of that girl in that movie, 50 First Dates, spewing bigotry then acting as if you didn't.
Orhan,
Also wishing you the best in Sunny California! We are in the midst of our first winter hit, so things are slow....guess I should go find something else to waste my time on.
I have no hard feeling about tammuz. I'm a rather thick skinned old desert rat who got lost somewhere along the way and ended up in New England surrounded by a bunch of Yankees!
Maybe no hard feelings, but certainly bigoted preconceptions.
For fuck's sake... I've seen more logic in UFO conspiracy threads than in TAM's posts. It's a lost cause that no amount of squirrel pictures can fix.
Just rain here snook, but quite a bit. Supposed to get breezy later, up to 50.
Ok well I'm just not going to read any of that. Can you all just STOP posting anything? don't respond to whatever slight you perceive, just move on. Thank you!
Sarah, I'm very very sorry to hear about your father. Hospice can be a nice time of togetherness however - here's hoping that's what it is for you and your family. Oddly enough, planning a funeral (including the obit) can actually be a nice little project to do together - you'd be surprised at the stories and conversations it can provoke. I remember my grandfather picking out his hymns and telling us why he chose them each.
Like everyone else, I found Joan Didion's book on the year she lost her husband to be a very moving walk through grief. You might like it - it's called The Year of Magical Thinking.
tammuz....just in case your an American...Happy Turkey Day!
I don't celebrate the killing of native Americans and theft of land, snooker.
Neither do I....:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/magazine/who-killed-anna-mae.html?_r=0
Snooker, that was a very sad happening but you know what I mean and you know that you're posting this story cynically. I am not saying you would be consciously celebrating the ethnic cleansing of the native american people...but this day of all days should be declared a somber day of remembrance ...not an occasion to give thanks based in a history of deceipt, theft and ethnic cleansing. I wish you good days, since you had good intentions in your wish...but never a good 'Thanksgiving' day
Its not about political correctness. Look at it from the native indian perspective. Its about being honest about history, sensitive to those who carry with them its burdens and were its victims. But obviously you lack sensitivity. Funny, you speaking about idiocy and the lack of intelligence....as if you knew what that meant. Stupid, insensitive and maladroit., these qualities would approximate you more.
tammuz....nope not cynically. I just want to let you know there are two sides of the coin. There were also people out there Non Native American, being sure Indians were not starving back in the day. My ancestors let a few cattle go missing because they knew someone was going to live thru another long winter. People came to my great grand mothers kitchen dressed in deer skin, and she gave them apple pie. There was never any feeling of us verse them.
I spent my informative years on the reservation. It is not a pretty situation. I had a teenage kid come at me with a knife, I took it away from him in a struggle. His elder was glad I did, cause he knew if it was someone else there might not have been a second chance.
One of my best high school friends, passed away a couple of years ago. He was a Lakota medicine man. I have always cherished our friendship.
So in closing everyday is Thanksgiving Day for me. Glad to be alive and glad to do positive things for people!
To continue along on the important subject here, I've found Christopher Hitchens' last book "Mortality" (written from his death bed as he battled cancer) is perfect.
TAM, the only thing you're accomplished with your last dozen posts is to confirm what everyone already expected from you. There is not enough Guinness available to drown away your pedestrian sloganistic views.
See, I can add adjectives too!
Stupid, insensitive and maladroit
So much for tammy's moral and ethical superiority. Somebody described him very well the other day:
can't remember who it was ...
snook, here's to you on Thanksgiving - thanks!
I'm having Thanksgiving with a native american!
Snooker, a few personal anecdotes do not wipe away the scale of ethic cleansing carried out by the colonists, as much as you would like to relativize violence that came from both directions in order to feel happy about your turkey. The historical fact is that Thanksgiving, for the Native Americans, is a reminder of the massacres that were committed against them on their homeland by people who came to usurp their land . "...many American Indians today call Thanksgiving a "Day of Mourning".
So, talk to me all you want about how you have Native Indian friends and cite as many discrete events as you like to prove that there is violence directed the other way, fact is, your Thanksgiving, for many many Americans of Native American origin, is a slap in the face, showing how insensitive and willingly amnesiac one part of this nation-colony is towards another. An account:
The colonists were contemptuous of the Indians, who they regarded as uncivilized and satanic heathens, and the fragile early peace between Native Americans and the early settlers would soon unravel in a horrific manner in what is now Mystic Connecticut, where the Pequot tribe was celebrating their own Thanksgiving, the green corn festival. In the predawn hours, settlers-- not the Pilgrims, but a band of Puritans-- descended on their village and shot, clubbed and burned alive over 700 native men, woman and children.
This slaughter, according to Robert Jensen, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, was the real origin of Thanksgiving-- so proclaimed in 1637 by Massachusetts Bay Governor John Winthrop in gratitude for God's destruction of the defenseless Pequot village. Thereafter massacres of the Indians were routinely followed by "days of thanksgiving."
One of the saddest things I have observed in Canada - supposedly more demure and considerate than its southern neighbouring colony-nation- is the dire conditions of the autocthones , the native Canadians (who suffer from severe drink and drug use and have the highest suicide rates) . All of this they owe to a history...they did not just come to be without any explanation or context, even while the racists look down at them for not having a bourgeois life. All this suggests to me that those colony-countries were not able to resolve the pathological consequences of those weed-like roots of their foundation that had chocked off the autochthonous civilizations (the Canaans they thought their God had given them the right to eliminate).
So, the fact that you "give thanks" on a day where the very reason for your giving thanks constitutes one for the native americans to commemorate a day of mourning is callous and selfish of you. It is a cruel imperial obstinacy that propels Americans to still celebrate Thanksgiving.
TAM, see Miles' post above.
Ponder on the below as you "celebrate":
......................................................................................
From Happy National Genocide (Thanksgiving) Day!
Thanksgiving has never been a celebratory holiday in my family. Whenever my family did cook we always gave thanks that all the Native Americans weren't wiped out when Columbus "discovered" America. I never understood why my family was so against Thanksgiving. In school we drew turkeys with our hands and it was a happy time. It meant a couple of days off from school. My teachers made it seem like Thanksgiving was a holiday to look forward to. The New York City public education system told me what Thanksgiving was all about. I was very careful to regurgitate what they taught me when tested so I wouldn't get a failing grade. When I was older though I was told the truth by my family.
(...)I learned that in 1637 the body of a white man was discovered dead in a boat. Armed settlers -- which we tell our children were God fearing, gentle, sharing, kind Pilgrims -- invaded a Pequot village. They also set the village, which included many children, on fire. Those who were lucky enough to escape the fire were systematically sought, hunted down and killed. While many, including historians, still debate what exactly happened this day, also known as the Pequot Massacre, it directly led to the creation of "Thanksgiving Day." This is what the governor of Bay Colony had to say days after the massacre, "A day of thanksgiving. Thanking God that they had eliminated over 700 men, women and children."
(...) People always tell me to forget the past. I should just let it go and move on. Why do people of color always have to forget?! Would you tell a Jewish person to forget about the holocaust and just move on?! Would you tell the family of those who lost their lives on 9/11 to just forget about it?! So why are our tragedies forgettable and others are not?! I WILL NEVER forget! I will ALWAYS honor those who lost their lives unjustifiable.
So when you sit down to dinner this year, look at your family, serve the food and tell each other what you are most thankful for, think about the origins of Thanksgiving. Think about the countless Native Americans who lost their lives so you can carve a turkey and get the best deals on Black Friday. Say a prayer for them, especially the children, who died simply because of the color of their skin."
I believe i get the day off for thanksgiving because Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the day a holiday, not Columbus. celebrating harvests and giving thanks for things you're grateful for predates Columbus by a long time. Choosing to see this day as something about "colonialism" is your choice. I suppose if you have nothing to be thankful for, you might as well use the day as an excuse to tell those that are thankful why you think your racism is justifiable.
Happy thanksgiving thread central, and happy day for people not celebrating today. Every day is a good for turkey and go lions!
Go Bills!
Again, I do not celebrate a day which -not coincidentally -marks the day of a genocide. There is much more selfless value to be had in commemorating this day for the native Indians - and would show that you do live in the same country with the same history based on historical facts and mutual respect- than does a self-centric hocus pocus that only underlines how obstinate your egotistical arguments for it are, how inconsiderate you are to the descendants of the victims and how schizophrenic/ in denial of history you are simply in order to make you feel fuzzier and happier at the expense of other's discontent.
From:
Celebrating the Genocide of Native Americans
by GILBERT MERCIER
"Defenders of Thanksgiving will say that whatever the original murky meaning of the holiday, it has become a rare chance to spend time with family and show appreciation for what one has. For most Americans today, however, it is hard to be thankful. As matter of fact, unless you belong to the 2 percent who represent the US ruling class you should not be thankful at all. How can you be appreciative for what you have if you have lost your house to foreclosure, don’t have a job and can’t feed your family? How can you be appreciative if you are a homeless veteran? How can you be appreciative when you are poor or sick in a society without social justice? On this Thanksgiving day, rich celebrities and politicians will make a parody of what should be real charity by feeding countless poor and homeless. This will ease their conscience, at least for a while. Charity, however, should not be a substitute for social justice. Just to ruin some people’s appetites before they attack that golden turkey: keep in mind that today we are celebrating a genocide."
No one cares what you think TAM.
Of course, what I think is that one should listen to what they think, the ones who descend from a really history of suffering, not to the result of growing up on lies and tailored "history". Naturally, the likes of you would not care what I think. A turkey marking a meaningless hocus pocus day for you, a self centric banality that you could easily do away with, is more important to you than the feelings and well being of a whole communities of other people.
Here is a very moving article on the subject (the whole thing is really worth reading)
From:
Happy Thanksgiving: An American Indian Perspective
"Yet after the "Thanksgiving" holiday was coined and continues to be celebrated based on a story that does not include factual Native American history, "Thanksgiving" has become a time of mourning for many Native People. It serves as a period of remembering how a gift of generosity was rewarded by theft of land and seed corn, extermination of many Native people from disease, and near total elimination of many more from forced assimilation. As celebrated in America "Thanksgiving" is a reminder of 500 years of betrayal.
I'm within the assemblage of American Indians whose family and Native friends celebrates Thanksgiving. But our focus is not on pilgrims. We don't turn their lives topsy-turvy by making lengthy lists of things needing to be done for what has come to be known as Turkey Day. We aren't in the throng of those who go commercial in the planning and then grumble about the fanfare involved. Our celebration is deep-rooted in the simple tradition of honoring, remembering our ancestors, our history, with a focus on celebrating the harvest. We feast and pray for the healing to begin. Our thoughts turn to the Wampanoag people.
Each year when the platters of cracked corn, green-chile turkey soup and the pies are brought out, I remember my grandmother's words. "Child," she said, "We're Indians, our culture has been scattered into odds and bits, yet Indian People are determined to keep our life ways alive."
Since no one knows when the "first" thanksgiving occurred, if it were up to me, I'd dedicate the entire month of November focusing on National Native American Heritage, to teach the rich histories of Native Peoples, and I'd let the pilgrims have a day all of their own, in December."
Happy Thanksgiving to my American colleagues
And I invite my American colleagues to commemorate the memory of the Native Indian peoples on the day in lieu of this ritual of "Thanksgiving" (in itself a perverted and usurped celebration) reenacting events related to the massacres of these people.
Happy Thanksgiving - the celebration of a bountiful harvest shared with family and friends - to all. The best way to give thanks for what we have is to share it with those who don't.
A bountiful harvest of what exactly? people?
Here's an account of the original " Thanksgiving" harvest you speak of:
From:
Should We Rename Thanksgiving “National Ethnic Cleansing Day”?
Governor Bradford described the massacre in his History of Plymouth Plantation:
Those that scraped the fire were slaine with the sword; some hewed to peeces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatchte, and very few escapted. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyer, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweete sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enimie.
Bradford’s estimates proved low, and it is now believed that as many as 700 Pequot died that day, most of them women and children. In the aftermath of the siege, survivors were hunted down and slain or sold into slavery, amounting to what was, for all intents and purposes, an ethnic cleansing of the tribe. The English even went so far as to outlaw the name “Pequot.” (The tribe held on by a thread, and today there are approximately 1,500 members living in southeastern, Connecticut.) For decades after the Pequot Massacre, annual religious ceremonies and thanksgiving fast days were dedicated to its memory. (Thanksgiving was made an official federal holiday in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln, less than a year after he authorized what remains to this day the nation’s largest ever mass execution — the hanging of 38 Sioux men in Mankato, Minnesota in December 1862.)
In his book New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians 1620-1675, the historian Alden T. Vaughan called the Pequot War a game changer that had a “profound” effect on the nature of English-Native American relations:
Overnight the balance of power had shifted from the populous but unorganized natives to the English colonies. The destruction of the Pequots cleared away the only major obstacle to Puritan expansion. And the thoroughness of that destruction made a deep impression on the other tribes.
Since 1970, Native Americans have gathered every Thanksgiving around Cole’s Hill at Plymouth Rock for a National Day of Mourning to remember the Pequot and what happened to them in 1637. This Thanksgiving, before we dig into the bounty this nation has given us, let’s all take a moment to mourn with them and remember that there are two sides to every story.
Read more at http://www.phillymag.com/news/2012/11/20/dark-origins-thanksgiving/#GE2QcgkFCFd68vZb.99
Of course, I can only read "two sides to ever story" cynically
anything in there about the comanche attempted extermination of the lipan apache? anything about comanche selling captured enemy native americans to the spanish? anything about the origin of the name comanche which derives from the ute word kimantsi which means enemy? custer had crow scouts who hated the sioux. previous to this there were the beaver wars involving iroquois. yes a great ethnic cleansing took place and it shouldn't be forgotten and replaced with football and pie. but to think that all the indians got along great in some edenlike paradise is naive. history is cruel. history is displacement.
Did somebody say Beaver Wars?
Is that a porn film?
Miles, it might be. If so, I definitively took a chance with the office web-filter searching for that image.
On another note, I'm overhearing a conference call at the moment where the discussion is all about anti-gravity yoga and how to properly support the hoops and hammocks on the ceiling joists. Some people have all the fun.
Tammuz, Any insight for us on Christmas?
vado retro,
for what purpose do you add the above? I mean, there was nothing in those articles to suggest that the Native Americans were living in an eden devoid of strife or war between themselves (in fact, it is exactly this that helped the colonists in their misadventures in the Americans - for instance, between with the feuds between the Perquots and the Mohegans as tools in the Dutch-English struggle for dominance [as mentioned in one of the above articles] or the Iroquois and the Algonquin as tools in the British-French struggle for dominance( side note: some French Canadians think that they were better for the locals than the British, possibly in order to find higher moral grounds ). Nothing you added contradicts but rather sidetracks to create a false parallel to amoralize colonialism and its effects on the native Indians.
Wars happen all the time between any groups of people and inside any group of people, I agree. And, most times, it is a very complicated historical array of causes for which both sides are responsible or for which one side is more responsible than the other.
However, colonialism is, without doubt, a one sided project. Colonialism, with the intention of eliminating the rightful owners of land, ways of lives, etc, or with the intention of soaking up the riches of one people in order to siphon it off either to the growing colony or to the imperial headquarters is a superlative evil that is above all domestic disputes between the local people and the corruption or greed that might have pushed elements of those local people to align themselves with the one or more of the imperial powers in a complicated game of control and self survival.
Does any of this mitigate from what the responsibility of a modern contemporary nation that professes a belief in human rights yada yada to recognize for once and for all that it is built on a holocaust - the disappearing- of Indian peoples and cultures by the colonists? Does it mitigate from the responsibility for recognition through, for example, declaring a day of remembrance and commemoration instead one of usurped and usurping "thanksgiving".
No, history is not about displacement, although displacement might occur within history. History is defined by half conscious and half unconscious forces at play ( I am rephrasing the anthropologist Maurice Godelier), history cannot happen without the conscious elements of human civilizations - as it also is subject to the unconscious (epistemological and material) limits of those civilizations.
What that means is, that, especially at this point of history, when we consider that the rights and well being of all humans are sacrosanct and that we are all equal - a conscious part of your current stage of history attained through rationality and an evolution of ethical thought (and that is not exclusive to any one people) - one must recognize the evil that was and is colonialism and that this past history has had a disastrous effect on the Native American peoples that is evident today and to recognize this, realistically and symbolically.
This, rather that to try and defend it (or robbing it of all meaning) by exiting out of history altogether (and making such claims as : "history is about displacement") and finding a rather cowardly ethical exit from responsibility.
It is not (imperial) might that makes right, and you must make a choice between being just and fair ...or thinking that its quite ok to rob land and kill others because some of them fight amongst themselves and that its ok to lie to oneself and consider that this was marked by a day of kindness and fuzzy feelings amongst all...all the while hurting the descendants of that other community more.
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