What do you suggest as an alternative, though? The thing is, it's not my or your holiday to like or redeem, given neither of us is Native/Indian/First Nations. You can come up with what seem to you like "acceptable" alternatives all you like but the fact is there are plenty of actual people insulted and wounded by the holiday to whom a "diet Thanksgiving" with some token solemnity about Native people and a neutered white-America-friendly idea of thankfulness ignoring the holiday's bloody history would be an even bigger insult. It's not yours to forgive. Nor is it mine. You can't set a generic 'holiday festival' on the 25th of December with all the trappings of Christmas and claim it has nothing to do with Christianity and non-Christians shouldn't complain about being excluded. You can't erase the past. You can't divorce Thanksgiving from the Pilgrim myth and the reality of American jingoism and Manifest Destiny and the millions of murders and brutalizations of native people.
White Canadians and First Nations Canadians tend to tell different stories about how "chill" Canada is, I find. But as I'm neither First Nations nor Canadian, I can't speak for them.
There are plenty of harvest festivals left in the world that don't take active or passive pride in the genocide of a continent of people -- why is your own personal enjoyment of holiday food more important than that?
(For the record, I don't particularly celebrate holidays of American patriotism in general, including the Fourth of July. I don't personally subscribe to the concept of nationalism. But I understand Independence Day and national identity mean a lot to a lot of people for a lot of reasons. Thanksgiving, however, is just a giant turkey-stuffed dance on Indian graves, and I can't endorse it in good conscience.)
no subject
White Canadians and First Nations Canadians tend to tell different stories about how "chill" Canada is, I find. But as I'm neither First Nations nor Canadian, I can't speak for them.
There are plenty of harvest festivals left in the world that don't take active or passive pride in the genocide of a continent of people -- why is your own personal enjoyment of holiday food more important than that?
(For the record, I don't particularly celebrate holidays of American patriotism in general, including the Fourth of July. I don't personally subscribe to the concept of nationalism. But I understand Independence Day and national identity mean a lot to a lot of people for a lot of reasons. Thanksgiving, however, is just a giant turkey-stuffed dance on Indian graves, and I can't endorse it in good conscience.)