Day of Atonement

I mean, Happy Thanksgiving.

I was reading this article that suggested we rewrite Thanksgiving as a national holiday and instead observe a Day of Atonement for the genocide committed on behalf of the future generations (us). The author talked about expecting criticism from right-wing traditionalists, but not expecting so much criticism from left-wing progressivists. Their arguments tended to run along the lines of, "I know our history is terrible, but we can still give thanks for our family and friends and be quietly mindful of the true history so as not to buy into the big holiday consumerism nightmare."

And, you know, sure. Whatever. That's what I've tried to do. But this got me thinking about paradigm shifts (which I've been thinking about a lot lately) and so I started trying to imagine what would actually happen if the US converted Thanksgiving into a Day of Atonement. And in a way, it's hard to imagine because we don't have any national concept of saying we're sorry. In a way, it seems so un-American.

One of the petty arguments I've had about this (but which is actually a pretty big deal) is how would we teach a Day of Atonement to kids. How do we forgo the pretty mythology of the first Thanksgiving and teach little kids about the genocide on which our nation was founded? It's a tough one because our school curricula always start with watered-down, well, lies that sound nice and don't get to the gritty truth until high school or so, if then. This would be a big change.

So I imagine a classroom filled with 6-year-olds and they're expecting to wear paper Pilgrim and Indian hats and expecting to draw turkeys from their hand prints and expecting to learn about sharing your bounty, just like their older sisters and brothers did last year.

And I imagine a teacher standing before them, telling them a watered-down version of the genocide that followed the first Thanksgiving, telling them that a lot of the Indians got sick because the settlers had diseases the Indians' bodies couldn't deal with, so a lot of them died. And telling them that the settlers wanted to live on the land and didn't think the Indians should get to have the land, so they took it away and kept pushing the Indians further and further away until they had nothing left. The settlers took it all away. (We can tell them about torture, enforced slavery, and mass killings once they reach second or third grade).

And I imagine the teacher comparing this action to ... what? ... playground bullies deciding they want the swing set all to themselves. And if they push everyone else off, is that wrong? Because it was wrong when the settlers took all of the land. It was a really, really bad mistake. Therefore, on the Day of Atonement, we think about these bad mistakes we made as a country and as individuals, and we say we're sorry.

So then all the kids can say what they're thankful for and what they're sorry for. Then they get cookies. So there, class party and positive life skills all present.

The second and third graders can write letters to Congress about the ongoing oppression practiced against Native American nations now, today, ongoing, now and still in the United States.

The fifth and sixth grade social studies classes can do reports on centuries of anti-Native American policies and what can be done now to end our dominant oppression over these sovereign nations.

High schoolers can start petitions, and picket in front of their state legislature.

Adults, meanwhile, sometime between cooking turkeys and scribbling out holiday checks to charities, can sign their high schoolers' petitions and lobby to their Senators and Congresspersons about how the Constitution doesn't really have a clause regarding the civil liberties of the people we've conquered and how we've got to make reparations, big time, to all the people we've hurt in the past.

Yes, it'll be a new country, one that bothers to say 'we're sorry' and perhaps even one that'll stop doing bad things to begin with.

So, what we need in order to get this off the ground is... a historian, a political scientist, and a marketing/web design person. Or twenty. So, what say next year we offer apologies as well as thanks?

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