Every Day is Native American Heritage Day

A celebration of Thanksgiving connects to an "unofficial" national holiday for the Indigenous people. Are we missing the point of fully recognizing our native ancestors as a result?

This coming Friday, November 26th, we will observe Native American Heritage Day.

This is what the U.S. looked like before it was colonized.

It's not so ironic that woke culture has embraced the earmarking of Native American Heritage Day right after Thanksgiving Day. It became "unofficial" when George W. Bush enacted it with Congress in 2008.

In other words, it is not recognized as a legal national holiday.

In several states, Columbus Day is recognized as Native American Heritage Day.

If only people knew the truth about Thanksgiving, and Columbus, who, by more accurate historical accounts, was a brutal man, a savage dressed in a royal uniform.

If you happen to spend Thanksgiving in Plymouth Massachusetts this year, you can choose between two public commemorations.

You can watch or join the official parade, in which townspeople dressed like pilgrims march to Plymouth Rock bearing blunderbusses and beating drums in full colonial cadence.

Or you can stand on the top of Coles Hill with the indigenous people and their supporters and fast in observance of what they call a "national day of mourning" in remembrance of the destruction of Indian culture, its various bands or societies, and peoples who have had to fight against the injustices of mass assimilation.

I can't imagine the likes of the late great Russell Means or John Trudell would have approved of any holiday - official or not - that continues to marginalize the native people by virtue of the struggles imposed upon them.

My hope is that this will now change, along with many other civic injustices.