Thoughts on Thanksgiving Caricatures

Today I passed an elementary school where the kids were running around the playground wearing their Thanksgiving Indian headdresses, consisting of a headband with feathers coming out the front. I thought, “This is really odd. Indigenous people participating in the caricature of another indigenous people.”

Thanksgiving Day is traditionally seen as a harvest feast, and remembered as a peaceful time when colonists and Indians came together to ensure a successful harvest bounty. Yet many Native Americans also mourn this day, as the coming of the colonists meant an end not only to their way of life but also to life itself through disease and war. Europeans forcefully took their land and claimed it as their own, later creating a new nation of settlers.

So it is very interesting to me that these Hawaiian children would be participating in this particular way in Thanksgiving. I don’t think it would be odd to make handprint turkeys, or talk about being thankful. But I do think it is strange that the teachers chose to continue the Indian caricature, being indigenous themselves.

In addition, there are many political similarities. Hawaii is an occupied nation. In 1893 Queen Lili’uokalani was placed under house arrest by a group of American and European businessmen who were concerned that she was making changes in the country that would not benefit their businesses. They placed a Provincial Government in control and asked the United States to annex the country. President Grover Cleveland refused and said the Queen had been overthrown illegally. (In 1993, Bill Clinton even apologized for the illegal overthrown of the sovereign nation.) In 1896, a new presidential election brought McKinley into office and he signed papers annexing Hawaii. This was a government resolution, not a treaty of cession or conquest as required by international law. It was made a state in 1959.

I would think it would be painful to encourage Hawaiian kids to act out an American Indian tragedy; the history is so close to home. In addition, it encourages all of us to think about native people in the past tense. In fact, there is cultural continuity. Native people are alive today, not a culture only seen in museums. Museums have to deal with this issue as well; how to talk about American Indian cultures in the past but also represent that they are alive today. The Bishop Museum’s Hawaiian Hall just opened and really tackled this problem by providing contemporary quotes, art work, and video of Hawaiian people in the midst of objects made in the past.

Yet there is another layer of complexity: the desire to romanticize. In this case it is non-native AND native people who have this desire. Much of the historical Thanksgiving story we are told is a myth. Trying to recreate the past we tend to simplify and romanticize. Yet native people do this as well. At Seattle’s Burke Museum, the Pacific Rim exhibit was created in collaboration with people who were from various Pacific cultures and lived in Seattle. It was meant to showcase their lives. Yet many wished to show “traditional” aspects of their culture. For instance, the Korean area of the exhibit does not resemble modern Korean people in Seattle at all. In fact the Korean designers had relatives in Korea mail them stereotypical wedding garments and created a fictional setting for a wedding, complete with mannequins. They wanted to show the younger generations a beautiful part of their culture, even if it was wholly romanticized.

But no, I don’t hate Thanksgiving. I’m not totally down on dress up time. I love pumpkin pie. I love kid’s crafts. One of my professors in the Anthropology Department at MTSU told us once, “Anthropology ruins you for life.” This is apparently true. I can’t see cute kids running around a playground dressed up with feathers without thinking all of these things. But I do feel like it is good to be intentional. I just hope to find a balance of celebration and contemplation as we move through this Thanksgiving holiday. Maybe this will give you some food for thought and conversation as well.