One of my fondest Thanksgiving memories takes me back to my childhood days growing up in a parsonage. I was just learning to read - back then a tedious chore for me more than an enjoyable pastime. But on this Thanksgiving morning I sat mesmerized on the couch, snuggled up in a blanket, smelling the turkey roasting and imagining the life of those early pioneers who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620. Unbeknownst to me, this children's story about Pilgrims and Natives was told through the lens of 17th century colonialism. I read about turkeys and deer, corn and cabbage, and about the earliest harvest festivals shared with the Wampanoag Native Americans. The relationship between the Mayflower people and the Original people of this land was characterized largely as mutually supportive, though the story did lift up vivid depictions of battles with jabbing spears and flying arrows.

 

Our history lessons characterized the concept of the Doctrine of Discovery as adventurous explorations of a wild, vast westward frontier. I never thought of it as a taking of land and a conquering of people. When history books told the early war stories, so often they painted pictures of savage natives attacking pioneer villages rather than the other way around. They failed altogether to teach us about the often brutal subjugation and displacement of Native Americans and about the subsequent relegation of First Nation people to less desirable reservation lands.

 

Next year marks the 400 anniversary of those Separatists (soon to be Congregationalists) who came from Plymouth, England, on the Mayflower. As part of our spiritual heritage, the United Church of Christ has an opportunity and a responsibility to help reframe the understanding of our history. It feels especially right to approach Thanksgiving with a spirit of gratitude AND a spirit of confession.

Continue reading