[song I Want to Thank You by Otis Redding plays]

I want to thank you for being so nice now

I want to thank you for giving me my pride

Brian Lehrer: Hey, wait a minute. That's not The Brian Lehrer Show theme. That's I Want to Thank You by Otis Redding, but that's a better way to begin our Thanksgiving show, I think, don't you? Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. It is The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Pinch me. We are here live to keep you company on this Thanksgiving morning as you cook or travel or if you're just taking the holiday off from all that and hanging out alone.

Hello. We'll sprinkle in more Thanksgiving music along the way from now until noon. We'll have a couple of guests and take lots of your calls on the meaning of Thanksgiving. Also, who you would like to name, who you would like to thank for something in particular like Otis Redding there, thanked someone for being so nice and for giving him pride. Those were the lyrics that we just played.

Can you believe he got away with rhyming nice and pride? I guess Otis Redding can pull that off. Most of us absolutely cannot. Later, we'll also take calls on your immigrant Thanksgiving meal plates. We had a caller yesterday when we weren't even doing this topic yet, who mentioned that his family is from China and they never have turkey. They usually have suckling pig and abalone. That was yesterday.

We'll invite you to call later and tell us how your immigrant family combines traditional dishes from your heritage country with what we tend to consider an American Thanksgiving. Well, maybe you don't combine them at all and that's fine too. Thanksgiving is a good day to do a land acknowledgment. This is The Brian Lehrer Show in Lenapehoking, what we now call New York, but the homeland of the Lenape people who were displaced from here by European colonialism.

We will talk in a few minutes with Iakowi:he'ne' Oakes from the North American Indigenous Center of New York. She will join our first guest, historian Kenneth C. Davis, author of the Don't Know Much About series of books, the original Don't Know Much About History, and many others. He's got a new one that we'll talk about later called Great Short Books: A Year of Reading - Briefly. He's also written extensively about the origins of Thanksgiving and how it's changed over time. Hi, Ken Davis, always good to have you on. Happy Thanksgiving to you and welcome back to WNYC.

Kenneth C. Davis: Happy Thanksgiving to you, Brian, as well. I am always grateful, first of all, for the opportunity to join you. It's always a pleasure. We've been doing this a long time, it seems. I don't even want to think about that, but it is always a thrill and a wonderful opportunity to talk about history and holidays. Certainly, today, my other favorite topic, books.

Brian Lehrer: Which we will get to, but let's begin for now, not with the so-called original Thanksgiving story but with some thoughts from the Thanksgiving essay that you wrote in The New York Times back in 2014. I read that last night. One thing I didn't know was that the first president of the United States, George Washington, was the first to issue a proclamation of Thanksgiving as did James Madison a few presidents later. In both cases, if I understood you correctly, calling for somber days of prayer. Can you give us some of the contexts for George Washington's proclamation of Thanksgiving and why it was somber?

Kenneth C. Davis: That's correct. The somber part is simply because, to Washington, certainly to the Pilgrims and Puritans of an earlier colonial era, a day of Thanksgiving would have meant something very different from what we are talking about. To them, a day of Thanksgiving meant a day of prayer and fasting. Not exactly what most of us have in mind for later in this day, so a very, very different idea. Washington's proclamation was to be a day of gratitude for the Constitution itself.

It was right after the ratification of the United States Constitution. James Madison's proclamation was a day of Thanksgiving for the end of the War of 1812. These were proclamations of Thanksgiving, again, calling for prayer and fasting and gratitude to providence, this somewhat amorphous deity that deists like Washington would often use. The real connection to what we're celebrating today does not come about until 1863 when Abraham Lincoln issues a proclamation of Thanksgiving in the midst of some of the darkest days of the American Civil War.

Quite extraordinary that Lincoln thought this was still an occasion for which we should express gratitude at a time when he was mourning the death of his own son about a year earlier. The Gettysburg battle had been fought a few months earlier and Lincoln had, in fact, just delivered the Gettysburg Address on November 19th, 1863. A dark day to be telling America it should be grateful for all of its gifts.

Brian Lehrer: Even before Lincoln, you remind us in that article that a woman named Sarah Josepha Hale started advocating for a national day of Thanksgiving around 1837. What kinds of Thanksgiving days existed by then? Was it still the somber day of fasting? So funny to think that Thanksgiving was a day of fasting. Now, it's a day of gorging yourself, but what kinds of Thanksgiving days existed by 1837? What did Sarah Josepha Hale have in mind?

Kenneth C. Davis: Well, let me briefly explain that she was the editor of a magazine at that time called Godey's Lady's Book. I suppose you would describe it perhaps today as the Good Housekeeping of its day. Perhaps, she was the Martha Stewart of her day. She's also notable, we should point out, for having contributed to American folkways as the author of Mary Had a Little Lamb. I did not know that until I did some research on her a few years ago.

She had been advocating for a national day of Thanksgiving since 1837. She saw it as a day of commemoration of gratitude to our Heavenly Father observed in one section or state. What she was pointing out was that this was a tradition observed in New England primarily, where it was once called Founder's Day. This connection of the day of Thanksgiving to the arrival of the Pilgrims and, later, the Puritans.

She thought that this should be a day that the whole country should recognize and sympathize with gratitude and gladness as she put it. Lincoln's proclamation in 1863, perhaps at the behest of Sarah Josepha Hale, was the beginning of an unbroken string of presidential proclamations placing Thanksgiving Day on a Thursday in November. That date shifted around a little bit and we can come back to that in a minute. It was not until 1941 that Congress actually makes Thanksgiving a national holiday.

Long before that, people didn't like the idea of the federal government declaring holidays that were semi-religious in their nature. They thought that this should be left up to the states. Many states and many governors would declare a day of Thanksgiving. By the middle of the 19th century, a Thanksgiving meal was much more associated with what we would consider a traditional English, almost Christmas meal. That's where the turkey and/or the goose comes in. Far, far different, of course, from what the so-called Pilgrims ate in 1621.

Brian Lehrer: How did that real or mythical meal between settlers and Indigenous people from 1621 get connected to all that that you were describing from the 1700s and the 1800s?

Kenneth C. Davis: It's a really important question, Brian, because it gets to the question of how we tell our history and how we have told our history in this country for a very long time. A subject that is very much at hand right now. We are fighting over who gets to tell history in this country, so it's a very important story. I, like a great many other historians, have been trying to get the accurate story of Thanksgiving and the accurate story of American history right for a very long time.

It is a struggle because we're up against a tremendous amount of mythology, legend-making that has been around for truly hundreds of years. Just for the simple fact, the so-called Pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower in 1621. I should say December of 1620. They are coming to America ostensibly to start a new colony. It's a lousy time to go to Massachusetts December to start a new colony.

There, they drop anchor, the Mayflower. About half of the 102 passengers are what we would call Pilgrims. They didn't call themselves that. The other half were people who were coming to establish, get some property in this New World. There was a very small chance for an Englishman to get his own property in England at the time. This was, for many of these immigrants, a chance for opportunity in the New World, a tradition that continues obviously to our own time.

[crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead. Finish that thought.

Kenneth C. Davis: Go ahead.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead. No, you go.

Kenneth C. Davis: Oh, I was going to say, they then drop anchor. The men come ashore and begin to build a communal house. The women stay on board the Mayflower, which remains there for three months. It is a communal house. We can actually say also that this Massachusetts Plymouth colony begins as a sort of exercise in socialism, dare I even say communism. They were living in a communal house.

They were taking care of each other. Something else probably that wouldn't go over too well these days with some more traditionalists. This was, of course, part of the religious warfare that was going on in Europe at the time. These Pilgrims, let's call them that for the moment, were actually separatists. They wanted to leave the Church of England begun by Henry VIII when he broke with the Roman Catholic Church.

They felt that the Church of England was still too, what they would've called, Pope-ish. By that, they would've meant Catholic. They wanted a purer church and they wanted to separate from it. This is what distinguishes them from the later Puritans, who were faithful to the Church of England, but they just wanted to purify it, hence the word "Puritans." All of this begins a long time ago with a lot of religious infighting.

Brian Lehrer: Funny enough, I think we consider Thanksgiving a very secular holiday today. This is a day when whatever your religion is or various other aspects of our background, certainly our political polarization, and the way we divide into political tribes these days, that's supposed to be left at the door at Thanksgiving. It's really changed in that respect to being about as secular a holiday as maybe we have in this country.

Kenneth C. Davis: Well, in the earliest days when it became a Puritan holiday among New Englanders, it was essentially first a church-going day with a meal that followed and it was eventually celebrating that legendary feast. Let me add one other piece into this story here and it's an important part of this story, I'm sure your next guest will pick up on. These people are struggling to survive. There's no question about it.

Within the first few months, many of the Mayflower passengers began to die. Exposure, disease, just the difficulty, malnutrition. They actually start burying these people at night because they don't want the local Natives, they know they're there and they know they're watching them, to know how many of them are dying. One day in March, a half-naked Native man walks into the village and astonishes these people by speaking to them in English.

His name comes down to us as Samoset. A few days later, he returns with another man who speaks even better English. His name comes down to us Squanto. All children learned that story of how Squanto comes into the village and helps the Pilgrims learn how to plant corn with a piece of fish. This is such a miraculous thing. No one explains how Squanto knows English, and that's an important piece of the story.

Squanto spoke English because many years before, several years before, he had been taken captive by an English sea captain, taken to Spain, and sold into slavery. Makes his way eventually to London, where someone recognizes that a Native American who speaks English and knows the territory might be very useful in future explorations. He makes his way back to North America on an English ship, and he is there looking first for his own family and friends.

It is that village, Squanto's village, to which the Pilgrims actually settle. The village is deserted, except for bleached bones. The entire village had been wiped out in a pandemic. Pandemics and plagues are very important in American history. Where did that pandemic come from? Probably from the English and other European sailors, fishermen, traders who had plied these coasts for a very, very long time. All of that is left out of this history.

Brian Lehrer: One more thing before we open the phones to callers, and if you're just joining us, everybody, we are here live on Thanksgiving, The Brian Lehrer Show, with historian Kenneth C. Davis, our first guest who will be joined in a couple of minutes by Iakowi:he'ne' Oakes from the North American Indigenous Center of New York. We will pick up on some of the things less about history than about today actually, but we'll continue to move this conversation forward and include your calls.

One more thing from the narrative that you gave us in your New York Times article a few years ago, and this may sound more like something from today, but you told us there was a Democratic and Republican Thanksgiving competing Thanksgivings by party during FDR and even a derisive nickname, which is something we associate maybe with Donald Trump, "Hello, Ron DeSanctimonious," of Franksgiving from one side. Instead of Thanksgiving, Franksgiving. Tell us that story.

Kenneth C. Davis: That's right. Because Thanksgiving had not been established as a national holiday yet, it was simply a day that the President made a proclamation starting from Lincoln's in 1863. In 1939, the retailers came to Franklin D. Roosevelt and asked him to move up the traditional Thanksgiving Thursday one week. Roosevelt agreed because they made the case that this would help them and the country was still coming out of the depression.

It would help them with holiday sales, which have been linked to Thanksgiving for a very long time. That's not a new creation of Black Friday. Roosevelt does this, agrees with the retailers to do this. The Republicans in Congress scream that he is trampling on a sacred American tradition, and so they decide to keep their Thanksgiving on a more traditional date. 32 states joined Roosevelt's Democratic Thanksgiving in 1939.

16 others stuck with the traditional date, which became Republican Thanksgiving, and there was also derision of the Democratic date as Franksgiving for Franklin D. Roosevelt. After some congressional wrangling in December 1941, Roosevelt signed the legislation making Thanksgiving a legal holiday on the 4th Thursday in November, and there it has remained. We fight about anything in this country.

Brian Lehrer: Anything. Franksgiving for Franklin D. Roosevelt. I guess it didn't mean that they have hot dogs on Thanksgiving instead of Turkey on that side of the aisle. All right, listeners, we can take your calls on the meaning of Thanksgiving to you, 212-433-WYNC. You're hearing some of how the holiday was founded on some very somber origins and amplified by Lincoln under very grave circumstances. Is it a time for gratitude for you even in the face of hardship and loss? Do we have that? Do we have that impulse anymore?

If things are going badly instead of just saying, "Oh, everything's bad and it's Thanksgiving. I don't have anything," in the face of hardship and loss to be grateful, have we lost that? Is it national for you, the meaning of Thanksgiving? Is it spiritual for you in some of the original religious ways that Ken was describing? Is it intersectional for you in any way beyond gathering with family from both sides of the aisle and having a feast?

Your calls on the meaning of Thanksgiving to you, let's say outside of yourself or your most immediate family, 212-433-WNYC. Any Indigenous people listening? We hope you'll call in as well as anyone else. Indigenous listeners, do you find anything to celebrate here given the history of this country? Anyone else, any of your thoughts on the meaning of Thanksgiving outside of your most personal circles? 212-433-WYNC, 212-433-9692. In a minute, as Ken Davis stays with us, we'll also be joined by Iakowi:he'ne' Oakes from the Indigenous Center of North America here in New York.

Brian Lehrer on WNYC live on Thanksgiving. Historian Kenneth C. Davis is still with us. Also joining us now is Iakowi:he'ne' Oakes, activist, athlete, artist, and co-founder of the North American Indigenous Center of New York, which describes itself as a Native woman-led and centered non-profit committed to Indigenous empowerment. Iakowi:he'ne' was last with us on Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples' Day. Iakowi:he'ne', thanks for some time today. Welcome back to WNYC.

Iakowi:he'ne' Oakes: Hi, [Iroquoian language]. Thank you for having me. It's Iakowi:he'ne'. Iakowi:he'ne' is my name. Thank you for having me. The topic today is very interesting and I appreciate you covering this. Today is so-called Thanksgiving, right?

Brian Lehrer: Do you observe Thanksgiving in any way, or if so, how? If not, how? I know that some Indigenous activists and institutions have renamed the day or additionally named it as Thankstaking or Truthsgiving or just call it a day of mourning. Have you adopted or do you relate to any of those in particular?

Iakowi:he'ne' Oakes: Yes, so that's a really loaded situation and changes over time for many of us. I am Kanienʼkehá꞉ka. I'm Mohawk of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Also known as Iroquois Confederacy. We're made up of five different nations towards the Northeastern region of the United States. Where Thanksgiving occurred was the most eastern shorelines, right? That was the Wampanoag, so they're a very different nation. They're our neighbors.

There's 574 very distinct nations within the United States that are federally recognized, so we want to keep that in mind. This is their story. Thanksgiving is their story to tell, to tell their history, what they've learned, and the things that have been passed down from their ancestors who survived and who fed the Pilgrims and who met them, and who shared knowledge with them.

These are things that slowly made their way to my people like what happened during that time and put everybody on guard, all the different nations within the Northeastern territories on guard, and prepared for what came not too long after the initial Thanksgiving feast. It means something very different for Natives as it does for Americans or non-Natives.

At one point in my life, my grandparents and a lot of grandparents in Native nations had been living in very systemically violent circumstances like on reservations where they couldn't even leave their reservations without a pass by the colonial settlers. Almost like concentration camps. They're very confined to these spaces and also stricken from their families to go to church schools, to go to residential schools and Indian day schools where they were then indoctrinated.

These holidays that are symbols of maybe family or American heritage are, in fact, to us, symbols of the American Holocaust to the genocide that we experienced. As I got older and as my grandparents, they were slowly, more or less, decolonizing themselves, but really hiding our language and our culture and our ceremonies because they weren't actually legal until 1978. We weren't able to celebrate our ceremonies until after 1978.

That was the year before I was born. My parents lost all of that. There was obvious cultural genocide, but there was also what happened 100 years before that, which was extremely violent. There are still extensions of that through residential schools and Indian day schools, where children were sadly getting raped and murdered and killed and sick and not treated for the sicknesses that came across ships such as the Mayflower, sicknesses that never existed here.

For me, I had a few years of my younger years maybe till I was 10 where we just blindly celebrated Thanksgiving. As my mother's generation became more aware and more empowered through things like the American Indian Movement and through things like the occupation of Alcatraz in San Francisco that happened in 1979, which was led by Richard Oakes, a relative of mine, and really igniting the American Indian Movement.

The first 10 years was like a decolonial stretch of time where we were letting go of these erasures of the truth and really reaching in to understand and learn about our perspective and our history of what had happened. Now, throughout my life, there's been a switch like I turned off that blind colonial perspective of history. I'm very much more aware now. To me, a date like Thanksgiving is the opposite of what it might be for an American.

It's really a symbolic marker of genocide and Holocaust for my people because we were once 100 million. Now, we're 6.7 million. We're 2.09% of the United States population. There are still extensions of systemic strategies that are still putting us at risk and that are still effectively decreasing our power and our people and just our place on this continent. It means very different things.

Brian Lehrer: Absolutely. It means the opposite as you say, given all the history that you just laid out and reminded people of or told them for the first time in some of those cases if they didn't know it and, of course, so much else. Iakowi:he'ne', is there a way for non-Indigenous people in this country to keep the Thanksgiving traditions they value in your opinion and still respect Indigenous people and their history?

Iakowi:he'ne' Oakes: Absolutely. I see it happening. I think the first step in everything is acknowledging and then accepting that truth, learning about that truth, and then figuring out ways to move forward. It's really like, "How can we move forward from this hallmark erasure of what had happened to the original people of this land?" What we do have are dates like Indigenous Peoples' Day, which is replacing Columbus Day. To most Native people, Columbus Day and Thanksgiving are not much different.

They mean very different things for us. Thanksgiving is sort of that, but it's also in the midst of November, which has been proclaimed as Native American Heritage Month. The entire month, this is a space and time annually where Americans and educational institutions and cultural institutions should really be committing themselves and their resources towards the acknowledgment and towards learning and making space for Native American perspective to happen.

I feel like Thanksgiving, the day itself, I think it is the symbol of American heritage, but it's important to know what the Native American perspective is and what that experience and truth is as well. The entire month of November is really a time for learning and exposure and creating space for us because that's the number one thing that has been taken from us, and then also erased throughout society.

Hopefully that there will be some course correction, especially in New York City where that's a great example in the Northeast, where there's been so much removal of Native Americans from their lands. The Lenape, in particular, who have been violently removed towards Oklahoma and Wisconsin and up north on the Canadian side of the border. It's really important to learn these histories and learn who and what was sacrificed for Americans' presence currently and presence and privilege on this land.

Brian Lehrer: Iakowi:he'ne' Oakes from the North American Indigenous Center of New York and historian Kenneth C. Davis with us live on Thanksgiving. To what you just said and I want to get both of you to weigh in on this. These days, more people are saying out loud that the United States was created on land stolen from the Indigenous people. We did a land acknowledgment at the beginning of the show today. I said WNYC is in Lenapehoking, on Lenape land. I want to read two more examples and then ask you both to talk about them.

I'm going to read briefly from the land acknowledgments from NYU's history department and the New York City Commission on Human Rights. The human rights one says on their website, "The commission acknowledges the land politically designated as New York City to be the homeland of the Lenape (Lenapehoking) who were violently displaced as a result of European settler colonialism over the course of 400 years. The Lenape are a diasporic people that remain closely connected with this land and are its rightful stewards." That's the one from the New York City Commission on Human rights.

The NYU School of Arts & Science's website says in part, "The Department of History at New York University acknowledges that it is located in ancestral Lenape homelands, and it recognizes the longstanding significance of these lands for Lenape nations past and present. We believe that historical awareness of Indigenous exclusion and erasure is critically important and are committed to working to overcome their effects in our own educational institutions," that from NYU's history department. Ken, for you as a historian, was there anything like land acknowledgments of any kind, how early in US history, or was it really all like out of sight, out of mind for most non-Indigenous Americans until really, really recently?

Kenneth C. Davis: Absolutely, Brian. It was very much out of sight, out of mind, and worse than out of sight, out of mind caricatured in the cutouts that we would see in the supermarket windows of the little children with their bows and arrows and feathers in their hair and the little Pilgrim children with their black hats and buckles. This is the mythology that has been so much a part of this.

Just to continue on this notion of acknowledgment, very interesting that the Plymouth Plantation Museum as it once was called is now the Plimoth Patuxet Museum, acknowledging that this land and this part of this American history is tied in with the entire history of this nation, of this place. I think that's an important landmark to point out that people are acknowledging this, just as Monticello and Mount Vernon are now much more openly acknowledging the history of enslaved people in those landmark places.

We have had a real swing in the pendulum towards acknowledging the real history and the beginning of what was clearly a genocide in this country 40 years after those Wampanoag, led by Massasoit, sit down at the so-called first Thanksgiving. Massasoit's son, who was known as King Philip, took his people to war against the Anglo colonists. It was the bloodiest war of America's colonial history by far.

There are very graphic descriptions, which I included 30 years ago, and don't know much about history of the burning of a village in what is now Rhode Island. We have slowly come to realize that this is part of the story that the history books left out. Unfortunately, right now, we have a pull going back in the opposite direction where states are saying, "We don't want to teach these kinds of stories that will make our children feel ashamed."

That's one of the most dangerous things, I think, that is going on in America right now. Tied in very closely, of course, to the banning of books. Thank you to the guest for bringing that perspective to this. We do need to celebrate our gratitude because we have a lot to be thankful for, but we can still do that with an honest eye to looking at what happened in this country over centuries. It is a shameful dark part of American history that was swept under the carpet for way too long.

Brian Lehrer: Iakowi:he'ne', are the land acknowledgments meaningful to you or other Mohawk or other Indigenous people you know, or are they received as just the little lip service? When these acknowledgments that I just read say things like, "The Lenape are the rightful stewards of this land," and that comes from the city government of New York, well, the city government of New York is not about to turn over Manhattan or anything else back to the Lenape. What does saying that even mean that's not disingenuous?

Iakowi:he'ne' Oakes: Yes, I actually often work with that commission of human rights. Land acknowledgments, they're very interesting. In the beginning, they felt meaningful. While people were navigating that from different institutions and so forth, trying to figure out what to write within those land acknowledgments, it seemed well-meaning. Then, ultimately, after a couple of years passing, as Natives, we see it now as just another hallmark symbol of fulfilling whatever diversity and inclusion that cannot be physically filled by including us. I know for a fact that we are purposely excluded from a lot of things within American society, especially in all of these city and state and federal departments.

We are really very much erased. In New York City, I've been working in New York City and community and in Native, I guess, politics and advocacy for a very long time. I really feel like the exclusion of all the other Native nations within the Northeast does a service to those that want to keep things simple and just get through it and say, "Oh, we did the land acknowledgment. We do it every time," but that's not enough. That will never be enough, not until we are fully acknowledged and included as the nations within that region. I feel like it's easier for them--

Brian Lehrer: What would that look like short of returning land?

Iakowi:he'ne' Oakes: It's easier for them to deal with Natives that are removed from the territory than it actually is to deal with the Natives that are actually present and there in the territory. If you ever look at a map and you look at the percentage of Native Americans in the United States by state, you'll see the majority of the Northeast and lower southern eastern states, very low percentages because things take here first, and then they moved West, right?

That systemic erasure is still happening within these land acknowledgments. For example, the United States Constitution and the founding of that originated from the Haudenosaunee people. Those principles and structures of democracy originated from the Haudenosaunee people in the Northeast. In society, there's very little information about Northeastern or Eastern Native nations.

As far as the land acknowledgments, there's a lot of work to do. That's like the cover to a book. That's the cover page to a book. What are we going to do from there? How are you actually going to give back and repair and how are we going to move forward and develop a better relationship together other than just throwing a stamp on things and thinking, "That's enough," because it is not enough?

What will be enough at the end of the day is creating equitable spaces and inclusion within not only these systems, but within the reform of systems that violently cause harm to not only Indigenous people but also our brothers and sisters from the southern border that should also have a place in a welcoming process of coming to the United States but are separated by these borders.

There's just so much work to do. In places like the human rights commission and NYU, they know. They know what that work is, but it's like, "Are we just going to talk about it or are we actually going to contribute and mobilize our resources to actually do something and be effective and impactful and help the marginalized people and really create a space of inclusion when it comes to rewriting history and reforming how we move forward?"

It's a very empty thing for me now. It was interesting in the beginning, a few years ago, the land acknowledgments. Now, it's a very empty thing because it's stopping there. The inclusion that they think we need is more performative. They might bring in Natives to bead or show art or dance, but that's great. That's great for kids as well, but I think it's important that there's a lot of truth that needs to be told in space that needs to be created for us.

That's a sentiment of Land Back, which is another phrase that you might hear a lot in Native cultures. I think that the idea of, "We don't want the kids to feel ashamed," I think it's the opposite. Realistically, it's the opposite. When we teach them how bad things were and where we're at now and how they can move forward, those kids will be proud and maybe contributors through that reform as well.

I just really think that things need to shift. I think kids will see things differently. I know the generation younger than myself-- I'm in my 40s, but the generation beneath me is the younger generation. They're very active. They're activated and that's something to be proud of. They're determined to create change. The ones underneath them, those are their heroes. We need to support that movement in that shift.

Brian Lehrer: Turning on its head, what people say is going to create shame and what could be looked at as something that would create pride, that's really, really interesting. Jackie in Rockland County, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jackie.

Jackie: Oh, hi there. Can you hear me okay?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Jackie: Okay, thanks for this show. I would just like to say, I was asked, what is Thanksgiving to me? I just would like to say, first of all, I live on Ramapough Lenape Munsee land here in Rockland County. Very close to the beautiful, great white Hudson River, where I grew up. Thanksgiving in our house was always this very open affair with friends and family and strangers. Then in 1970, when I was 12 years old, a neighbor of ours named Lane Slate wrote and directed a documentary called Trail of Tears.

I was 12 years old and it was probably as much of a rude awakening as this woman has been saying on your show as the Holocaust of the Holocaust in Europe. It was the Holocaust here and my 12-year-old mind changed. We had not learned about these things in school. Thanksgiving then became something that was, yes, it's a celebration of friends and family, but also the day of mourning. We would always take a walk up to Eagle Rock, which was way on the top of the Hudson River and the cliff, a dividing point between New Jersey and New York.

We'd walk up the Indian steps. There were about a hundred of them to the top of Eagle Rock. It's changed my perspective as much as I can be friends with our Ramapough Lenape friends in Mahwah and Rockland County and Chief Perry. We just always had this day as a very mixed day in our family because of these feelings of such sadness from what we learned when I was just 12 years old.

Brian Lehrer: Do you see, Jackie, anybody, any of your neighbors, or more extended family picking up that awareness? Because what the story that you are telling about yourself kind of connects to what our guest was saying is happening for some people as a kind of evolution of awareness in more recent generations. Both our guests said that. Do you see it happening around you?

Jackie: I do. I definitely do. Here in Rockland County, one of our social justice groups called the Rockland Coalition to End the New Jim Crow has very close ties to our Indigenous friends, the Ramapough Lenape. We try to bring awareness. We also fight for the rights of the river to be free. I know that's something that our Native Americans actually throughout the world are fighting for, not just Native Americans.

There is a big awareness that's happening here in Rockland County, although there is still a lot of negativity. I went to a school board meeting in Clarkstown, which was about CRT, and felt people were talking about very-- They were talking about "dirty Indians," and I just was absolutely stunned that this kind of thinking still exists here, but we're trying to crack it.

Brian Lehrer: At a school board meeting no less, right? Which is where so much of this breaks out these days all around the country. Jackie, thank you for sharing your story. Elliot in Manhattan has a history question for Ken. Elliot, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Elliot: Hi, happy Thanksgiving, Brian. Happy Thanksgiving, Ken. Ken, I'm wondering if you could tell us a little more about the autumn of 1863, which is when President Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving. That Thanksgiving holiday that he proclaimed was very shortly after his address in Gettysburg, which he had been working on for a long time. I was curious to know if there's any tie-in as far as he's concerned between those events. Also, I'm curious about Evacuation Day, which previously was the late November.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Ken, give us about a minute on that, and then we need to take a break.

Kenneth C. Davis: I think I mentioned Lincoln issuing this proclamation in what would've been a very somber time for him certainly. In fact, he had delivered the Gettysburg Address on November 19th, 1863. This Thanksgiving proclamation comes out a few weeks later. Of course, the Gettysburg Address was the commemoration of the cemetery at Gettysburg, where Union soldiers were being interred in the creation of the first national cemetery.

As I mentioned, also, he was still wearing a mourning armband for his own son and, of course, reading the casualty reports every day, so it was a bleak, bleak time in American history. Gettysburg had been fought. Remember, a few days after here in New York after Gettysburg, we had the draft riots where Black Americans were absolutely killed by largely Irish rioters who did not want to be drafted for a war that was now clearly being fought about slavery since the announcement of another proclamation, the Emancipation Proclamation.

It was a very, very perilous time in the war. Lincoln knew he was going to be up for re-election in 1864. The election would be coming up. He was quite certain he wouldn't be re-elected as the year began. It is remarkable that in this-- Now, maybe you could say, "Well, he's just dashing off a proforma thing," but it wasn't. I think he really believed that this idea called out to those kinds of words of mystic chords of memory that he talked about in his inaugural. I think it's a really powerful moment in American history.

I just want to add one other historical note, Brian. I think it's important when we talk about America's birth certificate, the Declaration of Independence, that among the words we don't usually read are these by Thomas Jefferson. "He has excited domestic insurrections among us," referring to King George, of course, "and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions." That was Jefferson's view of the Native American people and he contributed to the genocide.

Brian Lehrer: Good for everybody to know when we try to take 360-degree understandings of the founders of this country into account. Ken, thank you for that. Iakowi:he'ne' Oakes, co-founder of the North American Indigenous Center, thank you very much for joining us again today. Thanks for coming back on the show. Talk to you again, I hope.

Iakowi:he'ne' Oakes: [Iroquoian language] Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Ken Davis is going to stay with us for something completely different coming up in a minute. Brian Lehrer with you live here on Thanksgiving. Stay with us right until noon.

 

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