Fashion for Writers

Sometimes, I dress like this to teach. This tweedy blazer has elbow pads and this big chambray shirt dress has huge pockets. This hat falls off my head when Le Mistral blows into town. If I look like a brat, it’s because I am. Sometimes, if I go into work wearing anything that even suggests I might have a waistline or hangbags, I end up regretting it because of hyperactive teenagers, which is why it’s nice to wear a menswear inspired blazer and and big big chambray dress sometimes. I woke from a dream where a little girl stood in front of a Mastodon fossil with her hands out like a bunny and asked me, “Do you want to see me be a lamb?” Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I’m really happy that Jennifer left a comment about the origins of Canadian Thanksgiving on my Columbus Day Post from a few weeks ago:

Hang on everyone, even though we are now well past Canadian Thanksgiving, I’ve just discovered this blog (which I adore, by the way), and feel duty bound to point out that Canadian Thanksgiving has nothing whatsoever to do with American Thanksgiving. Canadian Thanksgiving is a harvest festival (which is why it occurs in early October) and does not have the racializing implications of American Thanksgiving, nor does it have anything to do with the Pilgrims.

I didn’t know that about Canadian Thanksgiving, but I’m so glad to know, and I’m always glad when holidays are not borne from shatteringly inaccurate histories and myths. I asked my students in class if they think most Native Americans happily celebrate this holiday, and my French students, who know little to nothing about American Thanksgiving, were like, ‘yeah, why not,’ until I told them that even by conservative estimates, there were about 7 million Native Americans living north of Mexico in 1492 (with excellent arguments made for a population count closer to 18-19 million) and by 1910, there were only 400,000.

“How I stopped hating Thanksgiving and learned to be afraid,” by Robert Jensen does a great job providing a succinct rundown on all the reasons why it’s kind of a disgusting holiday.

Although it’s well known to anyone who wants to know, let me summarize the argument against Thanksgiving: European invaders exterminated nearly the entire indigenous population to create the United States. Without that holocaust, the United States as we know it would not exist. The United States celebrates a Thanksgiving Day holiday dominated not by atonement for that horrendous crime against humanity but by a falsified account of the “encounter” between Europeans and American Indians. When confronted with this, most people in the United States (outside of indigenous communities) ignore the history or attack those who make the argument. This is intellectually dishonest, politically irresponsible, and morally bankrupt.

In left/radical circles, even though that basic critique is widely accepted, a relatively small number of people argue that we should renounce the holiday and refuse to celebrate it in any fashion. Most leftists who celebrate Thanksgiving claim that they can individually redefine the holiday in a politically progressive fashion in private, which is an illusory dodge: We don’t define holidays individually or privately — the idea of a holiday is rooted in its collective, shared meaning. When the dominant culture defines a holiday in a certain fashion, one can’t pretend to redefine it in private. To pretend we can do that also is intellectually dishonest, politically irresponsible, and morally bankrupt.

The entire article is worth reading, even though in a lot of ways it’s an obvious article. The reasons why Thanksgiving is a painful holiday to celebrate shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone, but frustratingly, it is, and often, around this time of year, when the print and online media (blogs included) go bananas and cream with holiday guides and holiday recipes and holiday tips that I find odious, I feel alienated and helpless and strange (even though I don’t think it’s strange to be against a holiday that celebrates genocide, colonialism, and deceit and lies on a national level,) and I wish sometimes other people would understand that my heart is not black as coal just because Thanksgiving doesn’t make me happy and warm inside, and that my heart indeed is capable of warmth and love, but I can only feel warmth toward things that I find to be genuinely loving.

For example, after I taught my students about the real origins of Thanksgiving, I felt happy and connected to the world to be one less American perpetuating lies, and I feel happy right now, knowing that tomorrow good folks will be protesting and observing the National Day of Mourning at Plymouth Rock, and I feel happy when I see these photos (via Julia from Allure à la Garconnière and Native Appropriations.)

The images are from a protest organized by Stanford students in 2009 in response to fraternities on campus holding ‘Native’ themed parties. When I see a picture like this, my heart doesn’t sour, I don’t complain, I don’t shoot my mouth about how much this protest offends me, but rather, I feel fiercely proud to have graduated from Stanford, and especially proud of progressive communities at Stanford. And when I read the transcript of the speech Moonanum James, co-leader of the United American Indians of New England (UAIM,) gave at the National Day of Mourning in Plymouth, 1998, my heart is soars even more:

Native people do not give thanks just one day a year. Every day, we thank the Creator for this beautiful earth and for our survival. But we will not give thanks for the European invasion of our country. We will not celebrate the theft of our lands and the genocide of our people. We will not sing and dance to please the tourists who come here seeking a Disneyland version of history. Attention all tourists: If you are expecting us to put on a show, you would be better advised to go down to Plymouth Rock and watch the tide wash over it.

Some ask us: Will you ever stop protesting? Some day we will stop protesting: We will stop protesting when the merchants of Plymouth are no longer making millions of dollars off the blood of our slaughtered ancestors. We will stop protesting when we can act as sovereign nations on our own land without the interference of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and what Sitting Bull called the “favorite ration chiefs.” When corporations stop polluting our mother, the earth. When racism has been eradicated. When the oppression of Two-Spirited people is a thing of the past. We will stop protesting when homeless people have homes and no child goes to bed hungry. When police brutality no longer exists in communities of color. We will stop protesting when Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu Jamal and the Puerto Rican independentistas and all the political prisoners are free.

That speech, thinking about my country’s history, and having just come home from seeing Arcade Fire in Marseille makes me want to cry.

Love, Jenny