The Meal Day: Psyops and Autumnal Harvest

essay and audio

THANKSGIVING ADDRESS: Greetings to the Natural World
English by John Stokes and David Kanawahienton Benedict, Mohawk by Dan Rokwaho Thompson Illustrations by John Kahionhes Fadden.

“The roots of these words reach back thousands of years to the very origins of the Haudenosaunee as a people.

“This publication was produced by The Tracking Project together with the Tree of Peace Society, the Six Nations Indian Museum and the Native Self-Sufficiency Center; proceeds are shared among these groups.”

*****

In my book, Moving Through The Empty Gate Forest: inside looking out, I explore, among a variety of topics, how books, to a large degree, have been used as tools of propaganda and false narratives. The following text from the book is an example, and the audio of my podcast “Get Lit With Literature” is an extended version of this post.

An example of Nationalism Social-Status Lite, with a book as author-ity figure, along with a romanticism of blood and soil.

Holidays, for example, Thanksgiving. A national ‘decree’ that then engineers social behavior, ignorant social behavior to the detriment of others. Personally, this traveler has pleasant memories of family gatherings for Thanksgiving yet now knows that the holiday reinforces a false narrative, perpetuating ignorance and repression of Native ways; an example of Nationalism Social-Status, a form of NotSee.

“[Sarah Josepha Buell Hale] was the first woman to publish a book, Northwood, in the English language in the Americas. ... And she was also the editor of a magazine called Godey’s Lady’s Book, which was the precursor to Ladies’ Home Journal. Godey’s Lady’s Book, under her editorship, raised from a distributorship of 5,000 to close to 500,000. In the 1800s, this magazine had a humongous sphere of influence on American culture.

“... Hale wrote letters to five Presidents of the United States: Zachary
Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Abraham Lincoln. Her initial letters failed to persuade, but the letter she wrote to Lincoln convinced him to sup port legislation establishing a national holiday of Thanksgiving in 1863.

“The idea of the typical Thanksgiving dinner came from her description of a New England Thanksgiving dinner in Northwood, which involved turkey and also a lot of major meats. That became the popular picture of Thanksgiving dinner. And for years, she wrote editorials saying, ‘We need to create this national holiday.’ ...

“Congress created the national holiday using the First Thanksgiving narrative that had became popular.”

This traveler doesn’t trust what Congress says or does, much of it being war-like. So to think back realizing that pleasant emotional associations with Thanksgiving were embedded in my consciousness and emotions, in part, from a lie from a government — that this traveler was taught was supposed to do otherwise — is disturbing. A Congress that is part of a government that has not abided by its word and signatures for approximately 400 treaties with the Native Peoples; Thanksgiving, a holiday built on lies about the relationship with those Native Peoples; a false Nationalism based on who ranks as ‘acceptable’ in the Social-Status or State-engineered Social structure.

An epigraph in Hale’s 1927 book Northwood; A Tale of New England speak volumes:

“He who loves not his country, can love nothing.”

That “country” was super-imposed over Native lands.

“So it became a myth of how this country was founded. It was a way for people to get their minds around a great story of the creation of this country. To build nationalism amongst them.”

The Nationalism affects social behaviors, making for a Nationalism Social-Status, a form of NotSee — if people don’t see the Native Peoples truthfully, if people don’t reckon with what’s been called the American Holocaust (the title of a book by David E. Stannard).

Also see the following post which provides both significant historical bits and highlights the verbal duplicities used to this day; one that stood out to me is, “Wamsutta … looked forward to setting the record straight that the Pilgrim “arrival” was an invasion.” “Arrival” perpetuates a Disneyesque experience of the so-called holiday instead of facing the actualities.
“Day of Mourning Perspective on Native American Heritage Month” by Peter d’Errico.

quotes from:
“The True, Indigenous History of Thanksgiving”

“Sarah Josepha Hale”
&
”Northwood”