“Being a Wampanoag person in this time of year, it’s always striking that we tell this story of the Pilgrims and the Indians, and yet the Wampanoag people are often times left out of this telling of this story. For many Wampanoag, Thanksgiving has always been considered a day of mourning because of that epidemic and the centuries of American Indian removal policies that followed. The guns, knives and armor the Pilgrims carried would intimidate enemies threatening Wampanoag territory. More recently, the Trump administration has been working to revoke reservation status for hundreds of acres of previously recognized Mashpee Wampanoag tribal lands. But it is important to bring the other side of history to light, he said, correcting inaccuracies and adding context to monuments and museums. The Wampanoag Trading Post and Gallery is featuring an exhibit of artwork and movies by and about the tribe at its Mashpee Commons location and at a vacant storefront across the street. “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and contrary to law,”. That contact with Europeans “brought plague and disease and pretty much almost wiped us out, so it’s not as much a cause for celebration,” says Kitty Hendricks-Miller, 62, Indian Education Coordinator at the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe. “If you ask the general public, even educated people, that's the most common explanation. “Even though it’s inaccurate, we can’t just bury it,” he said. As these debates were happening among the Wampanoag, the Pilgrims, most of whom were still living on the cramped and creaking Mayflower, struggled to survive the winter. Don't believe everything your kindergarten teacher told you, Pilgrims’ arrival in Provincetown 400 years ago spawned a clash of cultures, The beginning of American democracy on Cape Cod, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. He will continue to celebrate Thanksgiving — something he and his family do every year, after the National Day of Mourning in Plymouth. Author. Wampanoag people have always held many seasonal thanksgiving ceremonies. As for that 1621 feast — the supposed genesis of today’s Thanksgiving tradition — there was a small feast, but the Wampanoag were not invited, they showed up later. We have a chance to reclaim our language and our history and re-educate people. Visitors to the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum pause to examine a new exhibit about early interactions between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe in Provincetown, MA on Aug. 27. Please attempt to sign up again. The Wampanoag have survived and clung to their culture despite centuries of systemic removal from their land, destruction of their culture and denial of their rights. When Paula Peters was in second grade in Philadelphia in the mid-1960s, listening to a teacher talk about Plymouth colony and the Mayflower, a student asked what happened to the Native Americans who helped the Pilgrims settle, the Wampanoag. Years later, relations turned sour, leading to war, many deaths, and great diminishment of the Wampanoag tribe. It’s hard to separate the Pilgrims from what the United States would eventually become, Silverman said. It’s kind of like a resounding mantra, we’re still here.”. It also has an ally in President-elect Joe Biden, whose tribal nations platform indicates he’s on the side of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe—and Biden is reportedly vetting a Native American to be Interior Dept. But when you’ve been telling a story one way for four centuries, any change feels like a monumental one, she said. But while our nation’s inaugural harvest party was a crust-free affair, squash were a staple for the Wampanoag tribe that mixed with … In 1963, these two tracks crossed when President John F. Kennedy, whose family frolicked in the home of the native Nauset and Aquinnah people on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard, immortalized them in his own Thanksgiving Day proclamation, baking the plaits together like the bread broken and shared in the mythic first Thanksgiving feast. By signing up you are agreeing to our, Northeastern University Student Sent Back to Iran Despite Valid Visa, Judge's Order As Immigration Attorneys Warn of 'Troubling' Pattern, Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know now on politics, health and more, © 2021 TIME USA, LLC. It also is not the one you’ll find at Pilgrim Memorial Park in Plymouth, home of the famed Plymouth Rock and the Mayflower II, a replica of the cargo ship turned people carrier the Pilgrims crammed into to cross the Atlantic. … More: Not all Native Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. By the 1670s Massasoit was dead and his son Wamsutta had died after he was imprisoned in Plymouth for negotiating a land sale to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Wampanoag, which translates to Easterners, inhabited the eastern part of present day Massachusetts and Rhode Island. But the matter is not resolved, and while the tribe awaits Interior’s new decision, it is hoping for permanent protection through an act of Congress. Massasoit weighed the risks and concluded it was better to have the danger on his side than have to face it. That decision was made by Ousamequin, more commonly known as Massasoit, which means “great sachem.” In a structure that Peters says was far closer to a democratic government than the Pilgrim government, Wampanoag territory was organized into sachemships, each with a sachem — a leader — who would oversee that particular village. But it would cost valuable warriors, in short supply after the pandemic, and there was the risk of Europeans returning in overwhelming numbers or, worse, sailing around the Outer Cape to take their guns, knives and armor to the Narragansett, according to Silverman. Since then, Peters, a Mashpee Wampanoag tribe member, has promoted education about the real history behind the Thanksgiving holiday. Massasoit has gone through a bit of a rebrand in the ensuing centuries to be painted as the “protector and preserver” of the Pilgrims — as it says on the statue dedicated to him overlooking Plymouth Rock. The first national Thanksgiving Day did not invoke the Pilgrims at all. This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving. Part of my everyday being is telling people that we’re still here.”. The Wampanoag Trading Post and Gallery... Steven Peters, a spokesman for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, stands in a gallery opened for Native American Heritage Month. The decision to help the Pilgrims, whose ilk had been raiding Native villages and enslaving their people for nearly a century, came after they stole Native food and seed stores and dug up Native graves, pocketing funerary offerings, as described by Pilgrim leader Edward Winslow in “Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth,” published in 1622. Than have to face it more to one side. ” modern knowledge of how diseases,. Arduous process lasting more than 40,000 Wampanoag people in New England, will fasting. 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