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Thanksgiving can still retain a noble essence amid the gluttony of food, football games, and antacids, the chatter and posturing with annoying relatives and in-laws, and kids screaming and fighting at the card table.
Here’s how: Remember those grade school pageants/plays where the first Thanksgiving celebration is romantically portrayed with Pilgrims and Indians breaking bread together at a long table, each wearing their respective stereotypical attire? Pilgrim women and girls wore white aprons and cornets; the men in breeches and black chimney-like hats; all with wide white, starched collars. Buckskin, feathers and moccasins for the Indians. You know the look. You know the scene. You probably made your acing debut in one of these. (Note: The tribe at that first Thanksgiving were the Mashpee Wampanoag. They no longer grow corn; instead, they want to grow casinos in Cape Cod. Assimilation.)
The image and sentiment evoked by those pageants is powerful: Two diverse peoples and cultures are sitting together intermingled, not segregated like on some bus in the Jim Crow era, giving thanks for the food cooperatively placed on the table through their mutual labor.
Today, I believe we can re-enact such a scene. In fact, we can do it better with more authenticity and humanity. For starters, no one needs to darken their faces with paint to play a Native American. We’ve got plenty here in Summit County. Unfortunately, these natives don’t descend from local tribes like the Ute and Arapahoe.
Remember, we exterminated these or banished them on their own land to an obscure life in cloistered reservations. No assimilation there. (By the way, Nov. 29 is the anniversay of Colorado’s Sand Creek Massacre. Apparently, some immigrants can be very dangerous.)
Instead, Summit County’s Native Americans ascend from lands to the south: Yaquis along the U.S. border, Zapotecs from southern Mexico, and even Maya from Guatemala. Many will be 100 percent indigenous; don’t let the Spanish names fool you. Granted, most will only be part Native, but they will probably still look “the part” unless the women have peroxided their beautiful hair, and the men have grown facial hair.
Sadly, they won’t be wearing their native dress. Assimilation. (Guatemalans especially have beautiful textiles and embroidery.) Hey, we’ve got to work with what’s available for our Thanksgiving “production.”
More important is the food. It might amaze you how familiar the turkey will be to your swarthy guests, and they might even call it by the Nahuatl (Aztec) word guajolote. In pre-Colombian Mexico, the famous Mexican moles (sauces) were eaten with wild turkey, not chicken as is more common today. (The wild turkey thrived throughout North America years ago; and Ben Franklin even wanted the turkey instead of the bald eagle as the U.S. symbol. Too bad. Otherwise, imagine the mystical, almost eucharistic symbolism, each Thanksgiving consuming our national symbol.)
The corn on the cob will especially make your “Indian” guests feel at home; Mexico is the cradle of corn. They could prepare it in ways that would make it unrecognizable.
My favorite is the chocolate-flavored beverage champurrado.
Even more significantly, much of the food on your table would have been harvested in the great Central Valley of California by their relatives — other Indians. Even the ham was probably slaughtered and canned by brown hands. So few degrees of separation in humanity!
For example, are there raisins in your stuffing or dessert? An extimated 75,000 Mixtec Indians (from Mexico) today work in the raisin fields of California as pickers and packers. Such a beautiful scene that could make, as we Americans and immigrants sit together at our tables in Summit County giving thanks for our bounty! (However, now it would be white “natives” at the table with dark-skinned “immigrants.” How funny life is!)
So sad that history, labels and borders can separate and polarize people making so difficult the necessary and mutual task of putting food on the table. Happy Thanksgiving.
<i>Cesar Munoz writes a column about immigration issues. Reach him at cmunoz@coloradomtn.edu.</i>
Here’s how: Remember those grade school pageants/plays where the first Thanksgiving celebration is romantically portrayed with Pilgrims and Indians breaking bread together at a long table, each wearing their respective stereotypical attire? Pilgrim women and girls wore white aprons and cornets; the men in breeches and black chimney-like hats; all with wide white, starched collars. Buckskin, feathers and moccasins for the Indians. You know the look. You know the scene. You probably made your acing debut in one of these. (Note: The tribe at that first Thanksgiving were the Mashpee Wampanoag. They no longer grow corn; instead, they want to grow casinos in Cape Cod. Assimilation.)
The image and sentiment evoked by those pageants is powerful: Two diverse peoples and cultures are sitting together intermingled, not segregated like on some bus in the Jim Crow era, giving thanks for the food cooperatively placed on the table through their mutual labor.
Today, I believe we can re-enact such a scene. In fact, we can do it better with more authenticity and humanity. For starters, no one needs to darken their faces with paint to play a Native American. We’ve got plenty here in Summit County. Unfortunately, these natives don’t descend from local tribes like the Ute and Arapahoe.
Remember, we exterminated these or banished them on their own land to an obscure life in cloistered reservations. No assimilation there. (By the way, Nov. 29 is the anniversay of Colorado’s Sand Creek Massacre. Apparently, some immigrants can be very dangerous.)
Instead, Summit County’s Native Americans ascend from lands to the south: Yaquis along the U.S. border, Zapotecs from southern Mexico, and even Maya from Guatemala. Many will be 100 percent indigenous; don’t let the Spanish names fool you. Granted, most will only be part Native, but they will probably still look “the part” unless the women have peroxided their beautiful hair, and the men have grown facial hair.
Sadly, they won’t be wearing their native dress. Assimilation. (Guatemalans especially have beautiful textiles and embroidery.) Hey, we’ve got to work with what’s available for our Thanksgiving “production.”
More important is the food. It might amaze you how familiar the turkey will be to your swarthy guests, and they might even call it by the Nahuatl (Aztec) word guajolote. In pre-Colombian Mexico, the famous Mexican moles (sauces) were eaten with wild turkey, not chicken as is more common today. (The wild turkey thrived throughout North America years ago; and Ben Franklin even wanted the turkey instead of the bald eagle as the U.S. symbol. Too bad. Otherwise, imagine the mystical, almost eucharistic symbolism, each Thanksgiving consuming our national symbol.)
The corn on the cob will especially make your “Indian” guests feel at home; Mexico is the cradle of corn. They could prepare it in ways that would make it unrecognizable.
My favorite is the chocolate-flavored beverage champurrado.
Even more significantly, much of the food on your table would have been harvested in the great Central Valley of California by their relatives — other Indians. Even the ham was probably slaughtered and canned by brown hands. So few degrees of separation in humanity!
For example, are there raisins in your stuffing or dessert? An extimated 75,000 Mixtec Indians (from Mexico) today work in the raisin fields of California as pickers and packers. Such a beautiful scene that could make, as we Americans and immigrants sit together at our tables in Summit County giving thanks for our bounty! (However, now it would be white “natives” at the table with dark-skinned “immigrants.” How funny life is!)
So sad that history, labels and borders can separate and polarize people making so difficult the necessary and mutual task of putting food on the table. Happy Thanksgiving.
<i>Cesar Munoz writes a column about immigration issues. Reach him at cmunoz@coloradomtn.edu.</i>
