meow85 said:

football, baby, not that half-assed hockey mom shit, and real turkey, not that half-assed former Expos players shit.

hokie said:

How?

Mach said:

But American Thanksgiving is really only loosely associated with the harvest. As a matter of fact, mid-November is far too late in most of North America for anything resembling a harvest. I'm surprised that anyone, but especially you, Mach, can so blithely ignore the history behind your version of the holiday.

Mach said:

So if, years from now, the anniversary of April 20th (Hitler's birthday) became known as Adolph Day and schoolchildren were putting on plays about the harmonious joining together of the SS and the Jewish people, it would be okay to celebrate it as long as we said it had to do with thankfulness and the spring equinox?

meow85 said:

PANDURITO said:

I'm sorry, I forgot how awesome and forgivable genocide is. I'll just shut up now. After all, the day really is about giving thanks and absolutely nothing else. We should all be ignoring that dark and sad history to stuff our faces with bird flesh, shouldn't we? I'm sorry, how silly of me to forget.

It never fails to me amaze me how people on this site are so ready to pay lip service to black history and gloss over other minorities' histories. Yeah, I fucking said it. I guess rape and mass slaughter are a-okay if it was done to someone else.

I asked a question earlier, Org, and not one person even got near it. How can Americans celebrate this day with anything close to a clear conscience?

Well, I'm sorry if you can't find anything in your life to be thankful for.

No one celebrates the massacre and YOU KNOW IT.

And when I say I'm sorry I mean it.

PANDURITO said:

I can find plenty in my life to be thankful for. I listed just some of it above, if you care to read.

What people pretend the American version of the day means now does not change what it began as. You can't just sweep history under the rug like that. In a time when the majority of First Nations people live in poverty as a direct result of colonization, how is it appropriate for anyone to pretend this day is just about being grateful.

If that last remark of yours was a dig at my apology thread, then [Snip - luv4u]. I have nothing to apologize for with this.

If someone celebrates the end of, say, World War II, there will always be someone who'll say:
How can anybody celebrate the dropping of the Atomic Bombs on Japan?

meow85 said:

I don't celebrate the "slaughter". I celebrate Thanksgiving as a time to come together with family and friends and be thankful for the blessings in my life--same as you. Just because I'm American doesn't mean I'm any less thankful. It also doesn't mean I'm a heathen pig.

meow85 said:

Yeah sure meow - now your streching even futher

you continue to hold your judgements close and I'll continue to be me and live my life as best I can.

Smiply because you want to see and judge things in your prespective does not mean that others have to hold onto old outdated ideas based in negitives

I in NO way said I ignored the history - that's your ASSumption of me

I simply do not practice your set version of american T day and honestly I really do not mind that you think otherwise

Mach said:

Oh no you didn't! Oh snap!

PANDURITO said:

That wasn't the end of the war....

hokie said:

But couldn't you do that any day? Why pick a day that commemorates genocide to do it? Just because something is a tradition doesn't mean it's right, and I find it troubling that so many people are happy to ignore what the day really does mean to millions of First Nations people.

Let me paint a scenario for you. Let's say you're Native and you're the Chief of your tribe. Your people have been stuffed onto a reservation, most likely one without arable land. They or their parents or grandparents were forced to attend residential or mission schools, which hammered the idea into their heads that they were dirty, worthless heathens, and at which they suffered emotional, physical, and sexual abuses. Poverty, alcohol and substance abuse, crime, and suicide rates run rampant among your people. Then you turn on the TV to see the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and ads for 40 lb turkeys none of your people will be able to buy. Wouldn't that just be twisting the knife; adding insult to injury? Especially when someone else tells you to shut up and let them enjoy their feast because after all, it's a day to be thankful? What are Native people supposed to be thankful for?
[Edited 10/14/08 12:51pm]

Mach said:

How is that stretching? Can you explain to me how in any way the scenario I described is different than the reality of this holiday?

"Outdated ideas based on negatives"? How can you belittle what happened like that? And put a laughing smiley face after it? People died in the millions, and you're just dismissing it. For what? You claim not to ignore the history, but insist on flippantly dismissing what I'm saying.

If you think that way, that's your right. But my opinion of you has changed completely. I used to think you gave a shit about other people. I'm sorry that I was wrong.

ok how did my thread get turned into a P & R topic?


Do I have to move it over there??

Can we keep the thread on track?? Bueller, Bueller, anyone, anyone??

meow85 said:

Not one person in here "dismissed it".

Seriously, you seriously need to get over your anti-American self. Canada's track record is no better. The same shit went on here. So we don't have a day that celebrates us taking over this country, but that doesn't mean that we as a country are any better at all.

And for a country that has a Thanksgiving that is supposed to just be about the fall harvest, I always wondered why in school we always made crafts and shit with pilgrims and Indians.

Thanksgiving is over now.

If you want to discuss First Nation issues, please be my guest by starting a thread there in P & R.