Sadly lost in all the feasting, football and family gatherings this last Thanksgiving was the genesis of the thing – that “First Thanksgiving” back in 1621 when a Patuxent Native American named Squanto showed the Pilgrims how to grow corn in this brave new world they found themselves in. Lost too, perhaps, was the largess of Massasoit, who gave food to the new colonists so that they might survive the winter.
Survive they did. To celebrate they threw a great feast. On hand were 53 Pilgrims and 90 Native Americans. They ate for three days, and then went their separate ways.
It’s stories such as these that make Native American Heritage Month all the more real, not remote and removed from where we are today. It’s in November that the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum honor the people who populated this vast land when the first Europeans stepped ashore.
The celebration isn’t confined to D.C., nor for that matter, to the month of November. The National Museum of the American Indian in New York is home to the blockbuster five-year exhibition Circle of Dance just now. It’s set to run through Oct. 8, 2017 and, according to the museum, details cultures throughout time that have used the body “to communicate and express – to tell stories, participate in the cycles of nature, mourn, pray and celebrate.” Native peoples throughout the Americas have done precisely that for centuries. It was – and in some instance remains – part of the fabric of who they are.
Don’t wait till next year to find out more about who they are. Their story is no sidebar to history. It is inextricably interwoven with the tale we’re all in the process of playing out.
(Featured image: Grand Canyon NPS)
