Hey y’all,
I’m back! Did you miss me last week? Probably not. But if you did, thank you. It’s nice to be missed.
This week’s newsletter is somewhat truncated, in part because the Rittenhouse verdict was handed down as I was writing it. That soured my mood, as I’m sure it did some of yours. Others will be celebrating. I don’t understand that, but I welcome a respectful dialogue. Feel free to get in touch with me if you think this verdict was good. I’d love to hear why. You can do that by simply responding to this email!
Actually, you can always get in touch with me by responding to this email, and I would love it if more of you would. Part of what I’d like to see this newsletter do is build rapport between me and you, my readers. I learn a lot from y’all, as I hope you learn some from me, and it’s always fun talking to you, even when we disagree. Especially when we disagree, actually, because I know that if you’re subscribed to this newsletter you are disagreeing in good faith and not just to be a troll. So, feel free to let me know when you think I get something wrong!
Anyway, as this is the last newsletter before Thanksgiving, I wrote about that holiday and what I’m thankful for. It’s not very original, but it is very topical. I hope you enjoy!
Next week I might write about Black Friday, though I don’t know what I would say other than please don’t participate in Black Friday. It is a terrible marketing gimmick that embraces the worst of conspicuous consumption and capitalism at the expense of the workers who really ought to be allowed to enjoy the holiday with their families, just like you and me.
Given that, it seems a little hypocritical to go into the “pay me” plug, but here goes. First, I want to thank Waka for the generous gift of the book she sent me. It’s in my to-be-read pile, but I can’t wait to get to it. If, like Waka, you want to support my work, you can become a Patron for as little as $3 a month, make a one-time donation using PayPal, or buy me a book to help with my research. All contributions are greatly appreciated, no matter how big or how small. None are expected, though. This newsletter is and will remain free.
Finally, I want to wish y’all a very happy Thanksgiving! Eat lots of food and hug your families. Remember the things that you have and focus less on the things you don’t have. We all have blessings, no matter how small, and it’s good to take a day to count them every year.
x. Skylar
On Thanksgiving…
Thanksgiving has never been my favourite holiday. To me, it has always gotten in the way of Christmas which – despite the commercialization – I have always loved. But I do admire a holiday that, ostensibly, is about giving thanks for what you have. In our consumerist culture, we are always lamenting what we don’t have. We rarely take a chance to reflect on what we do have.
So, in that regard, Thanksgiving is cool. Others, however, have a different perspective. And that is what I want to write about this week. For many Native Americans, Thanksgiving is not a happy day. Instead, it is a day of remembering the atrocities committed against their ancestors, and the atrocities still committed against them today.
A few years ago, Sean Sherman – the CEO of The Sioux Chef and an advocate for indigenous American cuisine and culture – penned this essay for Time Magazine in which he laments the whitewashing of the Thanksgiving story. “Thanksgiving really has nothing to do with Native Americans,” he writes, “and everything to do with an old (but not the oldest) guard conjuring a lie of the first peoples welcoming the settlers to bolster their false authority over what makes a ‘real’ American.”
He outlines a lot of what I find upsetting about Thanksgiving, namely the fact that we completely ignore the genocide that came after it in favor of a fictional story about friendly Natives saving grateful colonists. Nothing could be further from the truth.
As Paula Peters, a Mashpee Wampanoag and author and educator on Native American history, told the Washington Post last month, her ancestors were not even invited to the first Thanksgiving. “One hundred warriors show up armed to the teeth after they heard muskets fired,” she said. The English had fired gunshots in celebration of their feast, and the sound startled the Wampanoag, who thought they were about to go to war. It was only after an explanation from the English that the Wampanoag joined the feast.
Over the past several years, we’ve talked a lot about American history – who writes who, who controls the narrative, and who and what should be celebrated. Much of the hullabaloo over “critical race theory” is, in fact, over controlling the history. And controlling the history is very important, because in our history is written the story of who we are.
It’s why conservatives want to literally whitewash the worst parts of our history: remember that white woman here in Tennessee I wrote about last week? The one who doesn’t want her kids to see images of Civil Rights protestors in the 1960s being mauled with dogs and blasted with water hoses because it might make them feel bad?
Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. The way history is taught is political.
I have massive problems with the way we teach history in America. Back in 2017, I wrote about how truly bloody and violent American history is – and how rarely we frame it as such:
The United States of America was born in violence. We gained our independence through a bloody revolution in which we waged war to throw off the yoke of British rule. But before that, we were founded on white settler colonialism which saw us enslave Africans to work our plantations and exterminate the Native Americans of the Eastern Seaboard, Southeast, and Midwest in order to “settle” those lands.
I’ve talked a lot about this issue in the past, be it over Confederate monuments or Black Lives Matter protests. “This is who we are,” I wrote about the rising tide of authoritarianism last year, “who we have always been:”
The first authoritarians on these shores were arguably the Puritans, who valued a rigid social order and strict adherence to a narrow set of beliefs. John Adams famously signed the Alien and Sedition Acts to deport foreigners, make it harder for immigrants to vote, and criminalised “false statements” critical of the federal government.
In the 19th century, the Know Nothings campaigned on anti-Catholic, anti-immigration platforms. They were born out of a xenophobic secret society known as the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, which demanded members obey orders without question. Andrew Jackson committed an act of ethnic cleansing against the Native Americans east of the Mississippi, marching them along the Trail of Tears. To this day his portrait graces the $20 bill and hangs in the Oval Office.
When I think of Thanksgiving, I think of genocide. I think of the lies we tell ourselves as a nation – including the lie of the first Thanksgiving – which I suppose allow white people to sleep at night but do a massive disservice to the indigenous peoples of this country. They’re still here, in case you haven’t noticed, and they have a very different perspective on what happened. It’s why many Native Americans refuse to celebrate Thanksgiving, instead holding a National Day of Mourning on the fourth Thursday of November.
I am willing to wager you have never heard of the National Day of Mourning or, if you have, you’ve not given it much thought. Hands up, I know I haven’t given it much thought. And that is understandable. We’ve come a long way since the first Thanksgiving, and for many the holiday has been largely stripped of its historical roots. Most of us see it as a day to travel, to spend with family, to eat delicious foods, and as the kickoff of the Christmas season.
I’m not here to chide you for not being sufficiently woke at the Thanksgiving table. Family holidays are hard enough. What I would like you to do, though, is to think about the way you learned about Thanksgiving. I’d wager that, like me, you dressed up as pilgrims and Indians and elementary school. That you learned about the friendship of Squanto (not his real name) and the kindness the Natives showed the starving colonists.
Then, I want you to think about the way we teach the rest of American history. How might it be looked at differently? Take Plymouth Rock for example. I went there as a child on a school trip, learning all about the pilgrims who landed there. Many of you will have visited Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. Each of these founding narratives tells us that America began when the colonists landed on our shores. But what about the people who lived here before?
In the state park near my house, there is a sign that indicates the park is built on the site of an ancient Indian mound. Those artefacts were dug up in the 1930s and taken to a museum in Knoxville. The sign paints a picture of a thriving village, but it doesn’t tell me who these people were. What was the name of their tribe? What were their traditions? Where did they go? I know not. Only that they were “Indians.”
That tells me very little. Each tribe was unique. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of different cultures, languages, religions, ethnicities and so on among the people who inhabited our continent before the first settlers from Europe arrived. Saying “Indian” is as vague as saying “European.” There’s a big difference between Russian and Irish, just as there is a big difference between Cherokee and Klallam.
The one thing that does unite these different tribes is their mistreatment first by the European colonial powers and later by the American settlers who expanded west and the US government which facilitated that expansion. Any honest reckoning with our history must reckon with this. Right now, we’re not doing that.
Part of the problem is that for decades, high school history curriculums have been captured by a conservative telling of history. A little-known fact is that Texas controls what students across the country are taught about history. Because of the size of Texas’ textbook market, publishers write the books to the standards set in the Lone Star State.
Those standards, as the Washington Post reported last year, are set by “a small group of White, God-fearing, conservative Texans” who insist on a “right-wing, colorblind, heteronormative, nationalist retelling of the American story.” But this is not an accurate telling of American history. Our history is a bloody history of oppression and violence. Any honest telling of our national story is a telling of that story.
That doesn’t mean it is only a telling of that story though. The story of our history is one of terrible villains, but also incredible heroes. “We committed some horrible atrocities, but never without opposition. There were those fighting for justice, even against horrific odds,” I wrote in this very newsletter earlier this year.
Telling the story of American history through the lens of the oppressed, rather than the lens of the oppressor, would be a more honest telling of our history. That is not likely to happen in schools any time soon. Unfortunately, the truth is too controversial.
But equally unlikely to happen is the left cancelling Thanksgiving. I’m sure some small fringe of Twitter leftists would love to see that happen, but I’ve not actually heard anyone calling for this holiday to be abolished. Most people, I think, can recognize that Thanksgiving has its good parts.
As I mentioned earlier, I like that it focuses on being grateful for what you do have – especially the love of family and community – rather than conspicuous consumption (which as I mentioned earlier is what Christmas is for, though it shouldn’t be). And even Sean Sherman thinks Thanksgiving can be made better if we focus more on indigenous foodways – which already make up much of the feast, from turkey to cranberries – and on reconnecting with the land.
I like that idea. Because, despite the way we teach Thanksgiving history – and the way we celebrate it – being so divorced from reality as to be delusional, I believe that Thanksgiving is an important American tradition. We are a multicultural, pluralistic society. Our people are not united by an ethnic or religious identity, but by a shared belief in democracy, liberty, and the rule of law. As such, we don’t have many festivals or celebrations which are universal.
Thanksgiving is one of those. No matter your race, religion, or political party, a day where we come together to celebrate the bounty in our lives, reflect on the things that matter, and spend time with family is something that most people can get behind. These values are universal, regardless of our beliefs, and in that regard, Thanksgiving is the rare national event that transcends our differences and brings us together as one nation. I like that.
I just think we could do it better. Because the truth is, the only way we are going to bring Americans together is if we reckon with our past – a past that is not a very pleasant one.
That doesn’t mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater, though. There is a lot of good in American history. It is indeed a remarkable nation that sets aside an entire day to pause and give thanks for its blessings. It is a remarkable nation that always tries to improve upon the last generation, that strives to live up to its founding promise that all men are created equal.
This is worth celebrating and remembering and teaching. But so is the fact that in the same document that lays out that founding promise, the Founding Fathers made clear their feelings on the indigenous population of this country by calling them “merciless Indian Savages.”
So, this Thanksgiving, as you are feasting on the foods native to this continent – pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, turkey, and so on – spare a thought for the Native Americans who came before us. Then, as you’re lying on the sofa fighting a tryptophane coma, maybe read up on the ones still here who continue to fight for an honest accounting of what the hell happened to their ancestors – and what is happening to them. Learn about their struggles, their history, their traditions, and their communities. And teach your children about them, too.
Because if I am right and America is the story of a nation constantly improving on its founding promise, then that story demands that we improve on what we were taught. We need to tell our children the truth. America’s past was bloody and brutal. That doesn’t mean its future needs to be.
On what I’m thankful for in 2021…
I thought it would be fun to list some things I am thankful for this year. I know things are kind of bleak right now – store shelves are empty due to the supply chain crisis, gas prices are up, wages are stagnant, inflation is rising, and that pesky pandemic just won’t go the fuck away – but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still plenty to be grateful for. After all, you have food in your fridge, a warm bed to sleep in at night, heat for your home, and air in your lungs. That’s more than many people around the world can say.
Here’s a list of some other things I’m thankful for:
A loving family. We fight, we bicker, and we exhaust one another – but we love each other and come together when it counts. I saw that this week when my aunt came down to help take care of my grandfather after he broke his ankle, and then the day she left her daughter and her wife came down to see him too. Having a houseful can be exhausting to the host, but it’s heartening to know that there are people who will drop everything to help you
On that same note, my dad just moved back to the East Coast after 15 years in Washington state. This month, I saw him for the first time since my college graduation in 2010. That’s wild when I think about how long that is. I will not allow another 11 years to go by before I see him again
I am grateful that I have a job I love and that allows me to speak my mind and contribute to the public discourse. I am privileged to highlight stories that I think are important and to advocate for issues and causes that matter to me. I don’t take that for granted, and I hope I never do.
Obviously, I’m immensely thankful for the vaccines and the boosters. My grandparents are fully immunized, meaning I don’t have to worry so much that they are going to get a virus that will kill them. I am also fully immunized, though I need my booster. But I’m so grateful for modern medicine and for the scientists whose years of research brought us a vaccine for COVID-19 in what has to be record time. Well done, science. Well done, indeed.
Adele and Taylor Swift dropping new music – well, Taylor rerecorded a bunch of old music, but it feels new – has made my #SadGayAutumn. I’ve been obsessed with the 10-minute version of “All Too Well,” and I am eagerly anticipating listening to Adele’s album tonight. It’s going to be fantastic. I just know it. These are two of my favorite artists of all time, so this has been a real treat for me.
A new coffeehouse opened up near my house. Before, I was having to drive about 20 minutes to get to a coffeehouse. Now, it’s only about 10 minutes at most. The owners are very nice and very queer-friendly, which in a small town in Tennessee is like finding a unicorn. I’m so grateful to them for providing excellent service, delicious lattes, and a welcoming environment. I forgot how much I love writing in coffeeshops.
I’ll leave it there, as I have other writing to do. Just know that I am very thankful this year. Let me know what you are thankful for. If enough of you do, I’ll include some in next week’s newsletter!
What I’ve been up to…
I wrote about Obama’s COP26 speech for The Independent – mostly about how I wasn’t that impressed and I’m tired of pretty words on climate change. We need action. These UN climate change conferences have really become a joke. Until the leaders take decisive action, it’s just a chance for them to pat one another on the back for saying all the right things but doing fuck all.
Also for the Independent, I wrote about Democratic infighting. I’m so sick of the Pete vs Kamala narrative that is emerging. Joe Biden is still the president and will be for another three years. Stop it. Celebrate the infrastructure win. Do the work the American people elected you to do. Win the 2022 midterms. Stop focusing on 2024, please, I am begging you.
For 100 Days in Appalachia, last week I wrote about how much Appalachia needs free community college. I remain enraged that Joe Manchin is the one standing in the way of what would be transformative public policy for our region. But, Joe Manchin is bought and paid for by coal barons and billionaires, so it’s not surprising.
And this week at 100 Days in Appalachia, I wrote about all the delicious food here in Appalachia and how our foodways are worth preserving. This seems timely for Thanksgiving, so I’m excited to share it with y’all. It got a warm response on social media, which was nice.
What I’ve been reading…
To be honest, I haven’t read a lot over the past week or two. Things have been so busy and chaotic on my end that I just haven’t had time. What little I have read I have not saved links to, so that sucks. Sorry y’all!
What I’ve been listening to…
It’s basically been Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well (10 Minute Version” on loop for the past week or two.
A picture of the puppy….