A digitally blurred reproduction of a painting, titled The First Thanksgiving 1621, by artist J.L.G Ferris.
Thanksgiving is the favorite holiday of many US Americans; unlike the rather boring or divisive holidays that honor
Columbus, Presidents, Martin Luther King, Jr., Independence, veterans and war, the birth of a religion, and a new year, Thanksgiving is centered on sharing food with family and friends. Individuals and families travel long distances at great expense to be with one another. It might be surprising to learn that the cherished tradition of Thanksgiving is, in fact, the most nationalist of all holidays because it narrates the national origin myth. The traditional meal, as we know, consists of the foods cultivated by Indigenous farmers - corn, squash, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, and turkey.
The US origin story of a covenant with God goes back to the Mayflower Compact, the first governing document of the Plymouth Colony. It is named for the ship that carried the hundred or so passengers, half of them religious dissidents, to what is now Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in November 1620.
This compact marked the beginning of settler democracy, which from its inception sought the elimination of the Indigenous.
Behind the black clothed and solemn "Pilgrims," was a corporation of shareholders, the Virginia Company, accompanied by armed and seasoned mercenaries on a colonizing project ordered by the English King James. If any local Natives were present at a colonizers' celebratory meal, they were surely there as servants, and the foods were confiscated, not offered as a gift.
Comment: The Moscow Times is also reporting: