Thanksgiving: A day of mourning for Native Americans over their massacre

Thanksgiving Day in the US is a day, as its name implies, to thank God for all the blessings bestowed upon them. But it is not a festive occasion for the Native American Indians.

They call this day a day of mourning, for its marks a dark chapter in their lives in which their ancestral lands were taken away from them, marked by forced removals.

The US at the time did not see anything wrong with depriving the natives of their land or children, considering them savages in need of being civilized, by force if necessary.

Every year on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States, people hold ceremonies to celebrate Thanksgiving. The annual Thanksgiving holiday tradition in the US goes back to when the first English settlers landed in the current state of Massachusetts.

The landing was followed by a religious celebration by the settlers, but it proved disastrous for the indigenous people living there. It was just the beginning of the pillage perpetrated in the service of European expansionism.

Indian Americans were greatly affected by the European colonization of the Americas.

The annual celebration has come to symbolize the genocide of Native Americans

Many believe Thanksgiving, marking the birth of the US, leaves out painful truths about the nation's history, presenting thanksgiving to children as a primarily happy time, trivializes the trials and tribulations of the Indigenous population of the continent.

The United American Indians of New England meet each year at Plymouth Rock on the coals Hill to mourn.

They gather to remember and reflect in the hope that America will never forget the sacrifices and tragedies of its native people. The United American Indians of New England declared Thanksgiving the national day of mourning 50 years ago, a day of remembrance and spiritual connection, as well as a protest of the racism and oppression which Native Americans continue to experience to this day.

Native Americans have endured genocide, discrimination, the abduction of their children, deliberate infection with smallpox, forced labour and other abuses Inflicted on them by the non Indigenous oppressors.

They were banished by the 1830 Indian Removal Act to largely barren reservations to the American West, and they have remained invisible to the rest of the country ever since.

In the US today, Native American households are 19 times as likely as white households to lack indoor plumbing. African Americans and Latin Americans are twice as likely some Native American families have to drive an hour or more to retrieve fresh water.

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