Showing Thanks

When I began looking for pictures for this collage, I googled “thanksgiving.” The first pictures that came up were cartoon turkeys and white “American” families sitting down to a table laden with food. Deeper into the results, I found the first depictions of Native Americans. However, these were all cartoon “Europeanized Indians” with white faces, little cubby cheeks, and black hair adorned with feathers.

I also found pictures of animals in head dresses
and pilgrim hats, which I found offensive.

I also searched “first thanksgiving,” which gave me a few more results containing native Americans. However, there were four paintings which could have come out of a middle school history text book repeated over and over again. While presenting a more realistic depiction of the first thanksgiving in appearances, I am sure that they were painted by white artists who were rendering pictures of how they thought it would look like.

These collections of images gave me an idea how the American public views the Thanksgiving holiday. I was already aware of this perception, so I decided to approach this project from a different angle.

In elementary school, when I was taught about Thanksgiving, I understood that the Pilgrims would not have survived that first winter if it wasn’t for the Indians. In my mind, this translated to ‘white people would not be here if the Indians had not helped the pilgrims.’ Of course, now I know that not to be true, as there were waves of colonists that arrived from different countries in Europe. But about the first time I learned to story of the Indians and the Pilgrims, my parents also introduced me to the history of oppression that the Native Americans have endured since the Europeans arrived. As a child I thought that it was a horrible way for people to treat the people that had saved them in the first place. This is the idea I used to create this collage, how Euro-Americans have “shown thanks” all these years while still celebrating the kindness shown to the pilgrims by the Native Americans their first winter in North America.

Strong Women Stories: Introduction and Chapter 1

Chapter 1 tells the story of Gertie Mai Muise, a Mi’kmaq women from western Newfoundland. She left her community to find gain an education and discovered that she had lost a part of herself by leaving. This story tells of her returning to her home to help her people both by building support for themselves from within the community and by teaching them to recognize offenses against the community from outsiders. Some of the themes of this chapter I found were quite similar to the themes present in the Zapatista movement. These are women working together to rebuild and protect the communities from the inside; working to get better health care for women and children, creating an environment where women can be safe in their own homes with support for the community for those who aren’t, and also the restrictions of an outside government on the ecological systems which support this communities. In Newfoundland this community is dependent on the salmon, but the government has placed restrictions on how many fish can be caught for “environmental protection” reasons, which in the long run just benefit the commercial industry who over fished them in the first place causing the concern. I was surprised to learn that the government has just decided that a certain race of people are ‘extinct’ when they are still living among them.

Anderson, Kim, and Bonita Lawrence, eds. Strong Women Stories : Native Vision and Activism. New York: Sumach P, 2004. 11-36.

Strong Women Stories: Chapter 2

This chapter is about Laura Schwager and her personal search for her Native identity. The key points of her story emphasize the way the Canadian government used forced assimilation to try and exterminate the native communities. She also shows how personal strength and a strong heart can help over come this oppression and how an individual can regain their heritage even without the recognition of the government. After her great grandmother lost her Indian status by marrying a non-native man, she did not celebrate her heritage and pass it on to her children. Therefore Laura’s grandfather grew up in a house hold that denied his mother’s culture and was ‘ashamed’ of their maternal lineage. Her father was raised in a similar environment. One thing that I thought was particularly interesting was the support of the non-native women in her family who encouraged her to explore her culture. Also, her grandmother supported her grandfather and helped him regain his Indian status. Another interesting fact that I learned from this reading is that even after her grandfather regained his status, he could not pass it on to his children, and though this, his grandchildren. By denying him, and other natives who have regained status, this right the Canadian government is further oppressing and assimilating these people.

Anderson, Kim, and Bonita Lawrence, eds. Strong Women Stories : Native Vision and Activism. New York: Sumach P, 2004. 37-54.

Don't Let the Sun Step Over You: Chapters 3 & 4

These two chapters tell the stories of Eva Tulene’s life while her family was working on the Apache Trail around the Roosevelt Dam to the Mormon Flat Dam. During this time period, her family moved around as they built the road. These chapters also include the stories of her mother and brother’s illnesses and the death of her father and sister. In another important story in these chapters tells of a census in which the family lost their name “Tulene” and became know to the state as “Case.”

It is important to note that through these stories, you can see the evidence of government pressure to assimilate into the white Euro-American culture. There are three cases of this. The first is when the census man records them as “Case” instead of their preferred family name, Tulene. This shows blatant disregard for their personal history. With out a constant last name, in the current patriarchal society it is hard to trace your lineage and find your ancestral roots. In the story of her sister’s death Eva gives two more examples of her forced assimilation. The first is the fact that her mother gets hauled away to jail, basically just because of a power trip by a local cop, who was demanding that her children go to one of the assimilation schools even though they were already attending the St. John’s school. The second example in this story is at the end when she doesn’t realize that her sister is dead, because the only way they explained her death to her was that she had gone to heaven.