Huffington Post: This Thanksgiving, Make These Native Recipes From Indigenous Chefs
Chef Sean Sherman explained that Americans already eat some indigenous, or pre-Colonial, foods on Thanksgiving — squash, pumpkin, cranberries, turkey and sweet potatoes — and that European settlers introduced post-Colonial staples like sugar, wheat flour, dairy and beef to North America.
“I feel like what’s been really dangerous about Thanksgiving is the mythology around the settlers and the natives and how they had such beautiful time,” Sherman said. “I think that storyline is really damaging to indigenous peoples and indigenous rights because it kind of just pushes aside so much of the trauma that was happening.” The Mankato hangings in Minnesota occurred the year before Lincoln made Thanksgiving an official holiday, and there have been hundreds of other massacres over hundreds of years.
“I think we could do so much better [by having] a holiday that’s not focused on something that just dismisses so much intense history for a large group of people,” he said. “It should really be about giving thanks for the harvest season and [exploring] an indigenous dinner.”
By: Garin Pirnia
Story Date: 2018-11-12T05:51:00+00:00
