Op-Ed

Some thoughts this Thanksgiving Day

Listening to Arlo Guthrie on Thanksgiving

By Paula Peters

It just wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without taking out part of the day, 18 and a half minutes to be exact, to listen to Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree.” The infamous folk song about a holiday dinner in Stockbridge, Massachusetts leading to littering, social injustice and the songwriter’s objection to the Vietnam War applies an appropriate and comical irony on the day.

Americans from coast to coast, and in hinterlands around the world, in war-torn nations like Iraq and Afghanistan, will gather together, clasp hands and give thanks over a bountiful feast featuring turkey, cranberry sauce and apple pie.

Meanwhile the economy is in the toilet because banks gave people a false sense of security loaning too much money so now the government is throwing billions more on to the fire, the environment is desperate for the world to notice that it is withering like an autumn leaf and no one sees the colors changing, and we are once again trapped in a war that probably never should have been started and there seems to be no way out. But we are grateful because it is the last Thursday in November.

I’m not suggesting people shouldn’t give thanks.

In the Wampanoag tradition, giving thanks to the creator occurs every day, every time we are given a gift from the earth and sea, when the sun shines on us and when the rain falls, each time we give life, and when it is taken away - it's all good.

But Thanksgiving, for the Wampanoag, is also a day to remember the sacrifices made by our ancestors. Particularly those who trusted the intentions of newcomers who came so far and endured such hardship to colonize this land.

An alliance of shared respect, understanding and mutual benefit between our Massasoit, Ossamiquin, and their governor, John Carver, probably seemed fair cause for celebration, breaking bread with one another and giving thanks in the fall of 1621.

Too bad our 17th century leader could not read the flawed doctrine of discovery to see how it would be used manipulate our land and freedom from us for lack of sanctioned religious worship.

Just imagine if someone came to your door today rapping a papal bull on the table and telling you to get out because you didn’t go to church? Boy would you be pissed.

Ossamiquin didn’t have a crystal ball to see how his actions would be played out over the next 50 years. He didn’t know his sons would die fighting for their ancestral homeland and his surviving people would be packed onto plantations where they were forced to pray or be sold into slavery.

All this hardly one generation removed from the treaty promising friendship forever.

Recovery from that initial error in judgment has taken us nearly 400 years, including a battle for federal recognition that spanned three decades, but we, the Wampanoag, are still here, so giving thanks to the creator is certainly in order.

Not only are we still here and grateful to be acknowledged, we can also take personal pride in the election of our first brown president. Brown being significant because during the oppressive eras of slavery and segregation racial discrimination did not place a boundary between Native and African Americans. Brown skin was brown skin and in the narrow mind of a racist there was no difference.

In my own lifetime I can recall that there were places my family was not welcome, stores my mother couldn’t shop in, children who we were not allowed to play with.

I was four years old when Martin Luther King marched on Washington, D.C., and pronounced his “Dream” to the world and it was revolutionary. I was too young to remember it delivered, but so profoundly moved by it that I read it annually to my children on Martin Luther King Day.

Who would imagine that a Dream so ambitious would be realized in the highest office of the most powerful and influential nation in the world less than 50 years later?

This is truly a different land than the one where 102 weary and destitute Mayflower passengers washed ashore in 1620 and were welcomed by strangers who taught them to survive, where agriculture and industry was built on the backs of African slaves, and where millions marched on our nation’s capitol for racial equality in 1964.

Still it is comforting to know some things – like Alice’s Restaurant Massacree – are consistently played at the crack of noon each Thanksgiving Day on hundreds of radio stations across the nation.

Last week when I learned that Arlo Guthrie would be playing at the Ziterion Theater in New Bedford on Saturday night, I became nostalgic for the hippie era I was raised in and bought a ticket hoping to hear Guthrie perform his epic folk opera live. Guthrie and his band performed for more than two hours, many of his own songs and some penned by his father, Woody, including renditions of “This Land is My Land” as it would be interpreted on at least three continents. But to my disappointment, “Alice” was not on the play list.

“It would be like living Ground Hog Day over and over,” said Guthrie, who explained that singing the song during hundreds of concerts since it was originally recorded in 1967 robbed him of the passion for the story. I understood.

So at noon today I will tune in to WMVY and hear the original version as it was performed more than 40 years ago when we were assured that there are still some places you can go and get anything you want. It’s a nice story.

Paula Peters is a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. She has been a newspaperwoman and a Native American activist for many years.
MS. Peters recently published a "Letter to the people of Plymouth UK"