This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving
By: David J. Silverman / Narrated By: William Roberts
Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
We reeeeally should lay the Thanksgiving Myth to rest… oh. my. gosh…
I’m fortunate in that never in my kiddyhood did I have to perform in some gosh danged elementary school Thanksgiving play. Nah, we stuck to making turkey drawings out of outlined hands, but a few kids did go further and make little construction paper headdresses so that they could play Cowboys and Indians out in the playground. Sides were chosen, and we all know who the “Good Injuns” were…
Now here I am, and we’re 50 years into a movement that started just prior to Frank James of the Wampanoag tribe’s decision to tell the truth at Plymouth Rock festivities in 1970. That’s how This Land is Their Land opens, with his speech that he was invited to write but which did NOT pass the muster with festivity planners—his was no gentle speech, but it was one chock-full of the realities of what happened to his people from “The First Thanksgiving” and on. He was denied, but he led a protest and read it anyway.
This is no easy listening experience, but to say it was eye-opening is a MASsive understatement. Nope, never the school play but, yup, I definitely had the idea that America was this vast place and that the indigenous cultures had rarely beheld the (Stinkin’) white man.
Turns out, they’d had PLENty of experience with whites by the time the Mayflower docked, whether through traders or trappers, through hesitant peaces or downright betrayals, they’d seen it all. Unfortunately, as author David J. Silverman posits, they’d juuuust been struck by an epidemic by the time the Mayflower and its passengers came to town. Previous whites had seen flourishing communities, but these new settlers found communities walking over the skulls and bones of the fallen. Not to say, however, that the Wampanoag weren’t resilient, and not to say that they didn’t eventually assist the Pilgrims… no they did, but they held their assistance out in a less benign manner than history presents. Later, muuuuch later, when seeking a just peace, they would offer that they should be shown “kindness” in just the manner that earlier Pilgrims benefitted.
Uhm, nope.
This audiobook is grand in its scope and its timeline, covering history prior to the Mayflower and esPECially going into King Philip’s War which ended an uneasy 50 year peace. Believe me when I say that it details betrayal after betrayal, atrocity after atrocity. And Silverman early on expresses that his Native American friends might take umbrage with some of its text, but he stands by it. There’s plenty of destruction done by the Wampanoag, and oh my gosh did I shriek, “Oh nooooooo!” when “Praying Indians” as they were called, joined the New England settlers in efforts to track and root out and betray their own brethren. That pretty much sealed the deal.
All is capably narrated by William Roberts who conveys action as well as the main text (There’s a LOT going on in the timespan of hundreds of years!). His voice also drips with irony and sarcasm as both Native and white figures in history contend with each other. It’s an almost painful Listen cuz we all know how things turn out.
Hundreds of years and NUMerous attempts to stamp out the culture and dilute the heritage by demanding assimilation are covered. But it’s not until we get closer to the end that there’s the joy of revival, and there’s even the return of the language to its people which began through one woman’s scholarly endeavors. Huzzah for resilience and hard, oh so hard, work.
This Thanksgiving, take a gander of true History, of how much is owed. Native Americans have never wanted the equal rights of the whites surrounding them; no, they’ve simply wished to be left in peace, to live in their own nations, alongside but not beholden, sovereign in their own rights. I’d love to be able to ask: Isn’t there room for us all?
But the harsh answer that cropped up time and time again in this well-researched and extremely edifying book is that, it sure doesn’t look like it to many people. For this squashed year of 2020, it’s time to let go of the grasping and look to just how very much we’ve been blessed with. My family certainly does NOT go back to the Mayflower, what with a mom who came over and a dad who’s a first generation born on this soil, but I wholly realize that I’ve benefited from all that was taken from others.
Jeez, no skin off my nose to own it…
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