It’s the week of Thanksgiving, that quintessential American holiday. We will eat turkey, stuffing and that gelatinous glob of cranberry sauce. Macy’s will organize a big parade in Manhattan. The Detroit Lions will lose a football game.
No Thanksgiving would be truly complete, though, without college students complaining about early American imperialism and how badly American Indians were once treated.
This year, one of the requisite protest events — called an anti-Thanksgiving potluck — is slated for Monday night at the University of Virginia, reports WVIR-TV, the local NBC affiliate.
UVA’s American Indian Student Union is the sponsor of the event, which offers the opportunity to discuss Thanksgiving from the perspective of Native Americans. The group says American Indians are forgotten in American society. As a result, people don’t understand the histories of native tribes or their role in Thanksgiving.
According to WVIR, the president of UVA’s American Indian Student Union, Katelyn Krause, described the event as “basically a get-together over food to discuss a native’s perspective on Thanksgiving, the history behind it, what role Native Americans played in Thanksgiving.”
Organizers of the event will then contrast the neglected Native American view with “the typical American view of Thanksgiving.”
Students who want to delve further into anti-Americanism can check out the group’s Wednesday screening of “The Only Good Indian” as well.
According to Rotten Tomatoes, the film is a “bitter, revisionist” tale about a Native American boy taken against his will to an indoctrination camp run by white Christians. Its audience Tomatometer score is 57 percent.
UVA’s director of media relations, Marian Anderfursen, told Campus Reform that the school frequently promotes this kind of political dialogue on campus.
“Our students are engaged in issues and they explore a lot of different ideas and we support that,” she said, according to Campus Reform.