Leonard Peltier, a Native American political prisoner, who was illegally extradited from Canada to the United States. He has been incarcerated for over 30 years.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
NO THANKS GIVING DAY STATEMENT
Greetings to my relatives, friends and supporters:
As the National Day of Mourning commemorates it 39th anniversary, I find myself approaching my 33rd year and I can’t but help to see the striking similarities between why you are there, and I am here in this prison. And it is the denial of the truth by people who can make a difference. And it doesn’t help matters any that those who do know, enable the myth of “Thanksgiving”. But we must continue to change that.
I hope that this will be the last statement I will have to write to you from prison on this National Day of Mourning. I tell you this because I want to believe that I can stand here with you next year a free man.
It would be an honor for me to stand in your circle to mourn the people who have fallen in the path of colonization. I carry many names and memories of friends and relatives who have passed on in defending the people. Many people whom I want to remember their sacrifice for me. Those names begin with Joe Stuntz and hopefully have ended with Standing Deer. In between I want to remember Rocky Duenas, Dallas Thundershield, Bobby Garcia, and Standing Deer. Many of my family and friends who have passed on and I could not be there weighs on me because they have suffered also through the years of my living nightmare.
We’ve been through a lot, but we are still here and we are the evidence of the Western Hemisphere being populated before the first real immigrant arrived on our shores and they have a holiday for him. And all we have is a Day of recognition tomorrow. So lets use the Native American Heritage Day as another page in writing the truth of our history. My Sister Betty Ann and others will be carrying the truth in Fargo where I was railroaded by the manipulations of the FBI. It is another day they will pay attention to us. This is how we will keep the faith and remain strong.
So I offer my most humble gratitude to you for being here today and every year. And I would ask everyone to work with my new committee as we prepare for a push to bring me home. Right now the two most important things I would like for everyone to concentrate on is the 30-year mandatory parole law and my transfer. There are plans being made, and they will be released when it is time. You can subscribe to our list serve at the website to stay updated on what we are doing and what you can do to help. I look forward to seeing you here next year.
In the Spirit of crazy Horse,
Leonard Peltier
Thanksgiving: A National Day of Mourning for Indians
Nov 24, 2008 9:19 PM
Following are excerpts from a statement written by Mahtowin Munro (Lakota) and Moonanum James (Wampanoag), co-leaders of United American Indians of New England. Read the entire statement at www.uaine.org.
Every year since 1970, United American Indians of New England have organized the National Day of Mourning observance in Plymouth at noon on Thanksgiving Day. Every year, hundreds of Native people and our supporters from all four directions join us. Every year, including this year, Native people from throughout the Americas will speak the truth about our history and about current issues and struggles we are involved in.
Why do hundreds of people stand out in the cold rather than sit home eating turkey and watching football? Do we have something against a harvest festival?
Of course not. But Thanksgiving in this country—and in particular in Plymouth—is much more than a harvest home festival. It is a celebration of pilgrim mythology.
According to this mythology, the pilgrims arrived, the Native people fed them and welcomed them, the Indians promptly faded into the background, and everyone lived happily ever after.
The pilgrims are glorified and mythologized because the circumstances of the first English-speaking colony in Jamestown were frankly too ugly (for example, they turned to cannibalism to survive) to hold up as an effective national myth.
The pilgrims did not find an empty land any more than Columbus “discovered” anything. Every inch of this land is Indian land. The pilgrims (who did not even call themselves pilgrims) did not come here seeking religious freedom; they already had that in Holland.
They came here as part of a commercial venture. They introduced sexism, racism, anti-lesbian and -gay bigotry, jails and the class system to these shores. One of the very first things they did when they arrived on Cape Cod—before they even made it to Plymouth—was to rob Wampanoag graves at Corn Hill and steal as much of the Indians’ winter provisions of corn and beans as they were able to carry.
They were no better than any other group of Europeans when it came to their treatment of the Indigenous peoples here. And, no, they did not even land at that sacred shrine called Plymouth Rock, a monument to racism and oppression which we are proud to say we buried in 1995.
The first official “Day of Thanksgiving” was proclaimed in 1637 by Governor Winthrop. He did so to celebrate the safe return of men from the Massachusetts Bay Colony who had gone to Mystic, Conn., to participate in the massacre of over 700 Pequot women, children and men.
About the only true thing in the whole mythology is that these pitiful European strangers would not have survived their first several years in “New England” were it not for the aid of Wampanoag people. What Native people got in return for this help was genocide, theft of our lands and never-ending repression. We are either treated as quaint relics from the past or are, to most people, virtually invisible.
When we dare to stand up for our rights, we are considered unreasonable. When we speak the truth about the history of the European invasion, we are often told to “go back where we came from.” Our roots are right here. They do not extend across any ocean.
National Day of Mourning began in 1970 when a Wampanoag man, Wamsutta Frank James, was asked to speak at a state dinner celebrating the 350th anniversary of the pilgrim landing. He refused to speak false words in praise of the white man for bringing civilization to us poor heathens. Native people from throughout the Americas came to Plymouth where they mourned their forebears who had been sold into slavery, burned alive, massacred, cheated and mistreated since the arrival of the Pilgrims in 1620.
But the commemoration of National Day of Mourning goes far beyond the circumstances of 1970.
Can we give thanks as we remember Native political prisoner Leonard Peltier, who was framed up by the FBI and has been falsely imprisoned since 1976? Despite mountains of evidence exonerating Peltier and the proven misconduct of federal prosecutors and the FBI, Peltier has been denied a new trial.
To Native people, the case of Peltier is one more ordeal in a litany of wrongdoings committed by the U.S. government against us. While the media in New England present images of the “Pequot miracle” in Connecticut, the vast majority of Native people continue to live in the most abysmal poverty.
Can we give thanks for the fact that, on many reservations, unemployment rates surpass 50 percent? Our life expectancies are much lower, our infant mortality and teen suicide rates much higher than those of white Americans. Racist stereotypes of Native people, such as those perpetuated by the Cleveland Indians, the Atlanta Braves and countless local and national sports teams, persist. Every single one of the more than 350 treaties that Native nations signed has been broken by the U.S. government. The bipartisan budget cuts have severely reduced educational opportunities for Native youth and the development of new housing on reservations, and have caused cause deadly cutbacks in healthcare and other necessary services.
Are we to give thanks for being treated as unwelcome in our own country?
When the descendants of the Aztec, Maya and Inca flee to the U.S., the descendants of the wash-ashore pilgrims term them “illegal aliens” and hunt them down.
We object to the “Pilgrim Progress” parade and to what goes on in Plymouth because they are making millions of tourist dollars every year from the false pilgrim mythology. That money is being made off the backs of our slaughtered Indigenous ancestors.
Increasing numbers of people are seeking alternatives to such holidays as Columbus Day and Thanksgiving. They are coming to the conclusion that if we are ever to achieve some sense of community, we must first face the truth about the history of this country and the toll that history has taken on the lives of millions of Indigenous, Black, Latin@, Asian, and poor and working-class white people.
The myth of Thanksgiving, served up with dollops of European superiority and manifest destiny, just does not work for many people in this country. As Malcolm X once said about the African-American experience in America, “We did not land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on us.” Exactly.
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