LJ Idol - Thanksgiving
"The Pilgrims" arrived in North America in December of 1620. What they found in the area they landed was abandoned Indian villages, some with unburied skeletons of the dead lying among the weeds --due to diseases introduced by earlier settlers,-- and a very hostile reception from those Indians still alive. It would seem the last European to ( Read more... )
I knew that the first Canadian Thanksgiving actually took place some twenty-odd years before the first official American Thanksgiving. Some fuckwitted explorer looking for a trade route got lost on Baffin Island and, faced with the bleak, unending, frozen, treeless landscape, and a crew subsequently on the verge of mutiny, decided that a celebration was just what people needed to chill out and not overthrow him. I'm still not entirely sure how successful he was.
One small pet peeve - Indigenous People aren't Indians. Indians are people from India. Indigenous Peoples and First/Original/Native Peoples are what the original residents of North America are usually called nowadays, unless you're referring to a specific nation, clan, or tribe, in which case you should refer to the name those specific people use(d) to describe themselves.
There are many groups of Indigenous People who are still fighting to regain their own autonomy as nations separate from those of their colonizers, and recognition of the legitimacy of their cultures today. Calling them Indians, though usually a totally well-intentioned (and one that I have admittedly made, bleh) undermines that.
You know, while we're getting all historical downer-y.
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