Bruno and Sam on Thanksgiving Day

Sam (the human) is Sue's younger son, father of Eliana, here with Bruno, a very sweet Pit Bull mix who thinks he's a lap dog. 

I am grateful to the many historians who, over the past fifteen years, have been telling us the truth about US history and customs. When I was a child, I was told the myth that the first Thanksgiving was a celebration of friendship between Native Americans and "pilgrims." Here's the true story:

Anglo settlers brutally attacked and destroyed unarmed Indigenous women, children, and old people, using unlimited violence in unrelenting attacks…. The first Jamestown settlers lacked a supply line and proved unable or unwilling to grow crops or hunt for their own sustenance. Jamestown military leader John Smith threatened to kill all the women and children if the Powhatan leaders would not feed and clothe the settlers as well as provide them with land and labor.  An Indigenous People’s History of the United States, by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (pp. 58-60). 

Many of us no longer gather to celebrate a false idea of unity, a day of mourning for many American Indian people; but we do gather with friends and family to be grateful, to appreciate the beauty of this world that corporatism is destroying, and to renew our wish to learn more of the truth, to do better by each other and all beings, and to do all we can to save the precious beauty that remains.

My son and his family are in Arizona, gathering with Cristina's family.