A Thanksgiving Parallel

 

Wampanoag still fighting for their land and water 

written November 25, 2020

Disinformation and outright lies flooding our media have darkened our vision. Getting past Thanksgiving invites us through our fears directly into this darkness. We best can’t go around it, we gotta go through it. Just maybe, more of these leaders with courage can help us throught the darkness false fears many of us have taken for granted. It’s possible the branding of religious, racial, gender, economics, birthplace and ethnicity groups of real people as enemy can now be removed. The Bible can show us truth through these falsehoods by “whatever is true, whatever is honorable..” (read on, Philippians 4_8). Now is a good time, after Thanksgiving, for truth to take us through the darkness of our lies about pandemics and politics, guided by the light Jesus gave us.

 

The Wampanoag nation’s elders and the documents of that history offer us  a historical example of this truth. This is the nation who first hosted the pilgrims (look up Patriot Pledge 2020/11/25/ National Day Mourning). After they disembarked bad things happened. There was a brief sharing of food and celebration. It will not be obscured for us by finding the evidence in the darkness. It’s true a small nation of some 40,000 citizens mostly perished from a combination of a pandemic and bloodshed from gunfire. But there were hundreds of survivors, unlike the report in some of our children’s history books that this nation went extinct (See Time Magazine “Wampanoag First Thanksgiving”).

 

Historical revisionism was almost inevitable as settlers arrived on our shores. Yes they were fleeing slavery and mass extermination. There were real reasons for fleeing to the New World. President Roosevelt did want to honor and update this national holiday in 1941, celebrating the welcome by those who hosted the Pilgrims as honored guests. But the tragic truth of what happened, the words actually spoken and written down as well as documents from the time, are now supported more by teachers in our schools and elders in our families. These good people know a right time to give children access to this real evidence, when they are ready. And the process is healing.  

 

The 400-year-old story is long, and difficult. The present story of our pandemic and increasing violence could now repeat the original Thanksgiving history of pandemic and war. We can grow in strength nationally from the pain of the truth of the first Thanksgiving. Will there be a similar truth behind our nation’s covid19, and its continuation into the next months or years? The greatest benefit would come as we discipline ourselves to the pain of truth-telling and hearing, and change our behavior accordingly as we are able.

 

The Wampanoag people believed a logical lie. The sound of gunfire had to be the cause of their deaths. The closer they were, the more immediate and bloody their death.  With no projectile visible, people died when close, and much later when far. No wonder it took generations.

 

Their pandemic spread, along with the gunfire, and 80% and more of the nation’s towns and villages had been wiped out already by the first Thanksgiving (see Wikipedia, or the Times article on Day of Mourning Thanksgiving) It appeared to many that the whole nation perished as the Indian wars, guns against spears and arrows, raged on. But hundreds had fled, and survived to keep their nation alive. These are the remnant tragically threatened again by our pandemic and by land seizure by our politicians.

 

After 400 years the Wampanoag are still fighting for their land and lives. In late March, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced proposed termination of 321 acres of tribal land in Mashpee and Taunton, Mass., to lose reservation status because the tribe supposedly didn’t meet the definition of Indian. In June, a federal judge described this decision “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and contrary to law,” and the matter is not resolved. The tribe awaits Interior’s new decision, and is hoping for permanent protection through an act of Congress.

 

A parallel history of hidden truth is becoming accessible to our Montana students and their teachers, and to the Wampanoag in Massachusetts.  This is now:

1)    Covid19 is in fact extremely dangerous.  We can learn from our epidemics in the past if we stop the blaming and get to work.

2)    Wear a mask. The fabric of even the best filters cannot prevent virus transmission when we must mix with those outside our family circle. But a mask properly worn, with proper ambient ventilation, drastically reduces the catching of each other’s breath! It’s in the air we share.

3)    Base our kids’ learning upon our families, not on our factory culture curriculum. Our schooling loss and our covid transmission can be stopped simultaneously. But it takes a huge change to recover trust for our 5,000 year-old outcomes-based learning unit: the family pod, its circle of security, the learning circle it encloses, with cross-generation engagement in real life needs. See The  Atlantic article, “School Wasn’t So Great Before Covid,” November 2020.

4)    And prayer changes things. There’s real evidence. Mostly God changes our own hearts. Let’s welcome some change, it’s part of living life.  Christmas is coming.