I hate to rain on your Thanksgiving Day parade, blown up and filled with hot air like the balloons blown up to incite people to stuff themselves silly today under the illusion of family unity, and prepping people to stampede their way into stores to get that must have toy made of plastic.

We’ve been through this before. And I’ve had mixed results with my own children and struggling against the mainstream who needs invented traditions to get people in a room together to play nice and be grateful.

Pero people are mourning today.

In 1970, United American Indians of New England declared US Thanksgiving Day a National Day of Mourning. This came about as a result of the suppression of the truth. Wamsutta, an Aquinnah Wampanoag man, had been asked to speak at a fancy Commonwealth of Massachusetts banquet celebrating the 350th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. He agreed. The organizers of the dinner, using as a pretext the need to prepare a press release, asked for a copy of the speech he planned to deliver. He agreed. Within days Wamsutta was told by a representative of the Department of Commerce and Development that he would not be allowed to give the speech. The reason given was due to the fact that, “…the theme of the anniversary celebration is brotherhood and anything inflammatory would have been out of place.” What they were really saying was that in this society, the truth is out of place.

And what is the truth?

The first official “Day of Thanksgiving” was proclaimed in 1637 by Governor Winthrop. He did so to celebrate the safe return of men from Massachusetts who had gone to Mystic, Connecticut to participate in the massacre of over 700 Pequot women, children, and men.

The pilgrims did not find an empty land any more than Columbus “discovered” anything. Every inch of this land is Indian land. The pilgrims (who did not even call themselves pilgrims) did not come here seeking religious freedom; they already had that in Holland. They came here as part of a commercial venture. They introduced sexism, racism, anti-lesbian and gay bigotry, jails, and the class system to these shores. One of the very first things they did when they arrived on Cape Cod — before they even made it to Plymouth — was to rob Wampanoag graves at Corn Hill and steal as much of the Indians’ winter provisions as they were able to carry. They were no better than any other group of Europeans when it came to their treatment of the Indigenous peoples here. And no, they did not even land at that sacred shrine down the hill called Plymouth Rock, a monument to racism and oppression which we are proud to say we buried in 1995.

Today at noon overlooking Plymouth Rock, there will be an acknowledgment of how what happened then still reverberates now in the form of racism and political oppression in the name of the oh so ironically named homeland security.

Today’s day of mourning is dedicated to political prisoner Leonard Peltier.

For more information on the National Day of Mourning visit The United American Indians of New England.