Thanksgiving means family and friends - it means being grateful for the year's harvest and just stopping to enjoy life and bounty for a moment, knowing we are stocked for the winter and can relax just a bit before the next year's struggle begins.
How did we earn this harvest? Some of us have ancestors who brought disease and genocide from European shores. They called the citizens "savages", and had little regret for taking their land and lives. Does that mean we can't still be happy for our family and friends? Can we be grateful that the United States was founded on taking land from the natives and killing most of them with our diseases and our guns? How many of us remember - or ever even knew - that America was just as populated as Europe when Europeans "discovered" it?
But, that was like 10 generations ago. So tell me... did the native Americans never steal land from each other? Was each tribe born in exactly the same local as it lived when the Europeans came? Did they never commit genocide to claim new lands? Did they never claim that their gods where mightier than the other tribe's gods in order to claim new lands? If that is the standard, then all mankind can just bow their heads and commit hari kari right this instant.
Or, should we each look at our own individual lives and not those of our tribe? Must every son and daughter be guilty of their father's sins? Can we not be happy that we are more mature than our ancestors - that we've learned better? Our culture is not our parents' culture - that is true for every generation. Individuals really don't change that much. But our children - they learn from us. Our great-great grandparents may have hated the savages - but their children felt sympathy. Their grandchildren honored the natives, and their great, great grandchildren are trying to make reparations. We improve - little by little.
So, should we be grateful this Thanksgiving? For what? I say - yes, and for how far we've come. Yes, but not for what our ancestors did - or at least, not by our current morals. But for what we do better in every generation - and the certainty that the next generation and the one after that - will do more than we ever dreamed.
Happy Thanksgiving, to you and yours.
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