Who were the Thanksgiving Indians?

Though very few people have ever heard of the Wampanoag Tribe, they are the Native people who were living near Plymouth rock and  welcomed the Pilgrims and fed them a nice meal some four hundred years ago.  Those are my people. So, my great-grandmother told me when I was five and sat in her kitchen with my hands folded on her neat white and red checkered table cloth.  When I had problems pronouncing the name (I had a lisp), she simply said, "We are the Thanksgiving Indians." She also told me we were the people of the Sun, of the East.  She went on to say that many of our people died after the coming of the Europeans.  Actually, fifty-thousand died of plague.  What disease did not finish off, King Philip's War did.  That was the point when the People of the Wampanoag Confederacy had enough of the encroaching foreigners and decided to fight back.  They were slaughtered to the man.

If you think I want you to spit out the turkey you have so happily ingested on this Holiday in the name of my fallen ancestors,  that's okay, you don't have to.  It is true for many years, even as a little one, I harbored deep rage at the idea that my relatives fed and nurtured their would-be murderers and that their kindness came back to bite them.  I thought that if they had just let them starve to death, then they might have gone away.  Maybe my people would still have their land and be at peace. Perhaps all the Africans that were needed to make this land great and habitable would not have been dragged from home and family and brought here to be worked to death, but I am not a little girl anymore.  I know now that even if the Wamponoag  who had walked out of those woods with food in arm, had turned on the Pilgrims on that day instead of feeding them, the Europeans would have sent another group and another group.  Europe had a lot of people to get rid of and eventually one group would have made a foothold. It is interesting though that a group of people fleeing persecution in Europe would turn around and persecute others in the same vicious manner and for the same reason of difference. It seems as if they only wanted tolerance for themselves and not everyone, which is selfish, ignorant and brutal. It makes you think they deserved to suffer and should have suffered more until they learned kindness and generosity.

My Ancestors

One could be angry at such people, but being angry does nothing but make the angry person miserable. It does not hurt the offender in any way especially since the Pilgrims died long ago. Being angry would only make my life worse. So, instead of being angry, now I think about the humanity of my ancestors. I know the way European-Americans describe Native people as being savage, but so are most European-Americans when faced with an intruder in their home. That is why we have guns and "a stand your ground rule." Natives have also been described as foolish, easily tricked and manipulated, but I have found that most good people are easily tricked when they have no deceit in them.  I am glad that when my ancestors were faced with the sight of people starving to death in the snow, they bravely put aside their prejudices and offered these other human beings sustenance.  They looked beyond the difference in skin color, in culture, and saw simply other hungry human beings.  I would not for the world that they had done differently. Yes, even though they died by the thousands because of their kindness. I was taught to believe in reincarnation. The soul does not die. My people either went on to another plane of existence because of their goodness (or they were reborn elsewhere We need more good people in this country.)

 I would rather be related to such kind, openhearted people than butchers who could not see the humanity in another person because of the color of their skin and felt justified in treating them inhumanly.  I would have nothing to be proud of if the Wamponoag had sat in fear of the future and allowed other people to starve. Their actions were not foolish but showed a profound goodness that I can only aspire to.  It is true that I wish the racist Pilgrims had been worthy or capable of understanding this superior gift and that they had acted in kind.  I wish as a nation we were all capable of truly living up to the sacrifice of the moment and seeing beyond the skin to the soul within.  Thanksgiving  commemorates the moment when two peoples met and one rose above their fears of difference to help others in need.

On this Thanksgiving, I hope that each of us remembers the Wamponoag who were described by the Pilgrims  as an especially tall and handsome people, intelligent and kind.  Without their goodness, we all would not be here today.  I hope one day, this great nation can follow their example instead of the one of fear and hatred the Pilgrims brought with them from across the sea.  I hope one day we will be as brave, as kind, as  good and openhearted as the Wampanoag were. My ancestors would have adjured me to try and change the world with my goodness, yet not allow the darkness in the world to change me. On this day, as a Wampanoag descendant, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving as I know my ancestors would have wanted me to.


If you agree, then please share and like this message of forgiveness and peace and bring the Wampanoag and their kindness and bravery back into the story of Thanksgiving.

Is Imitation the Sincerest Form of Flattery? The Rachel Dolezal question

In the aftermath of Rachel Dolezal's controversial self-identification as black, the question has arisen of who can and should be called "black." I have been asking this for a long time now because of its relevance to me. I am a real mixed-race person like Ms.Dolezal had claimed to be, but unlike her, I have never been so sure of my racial designation. I am genetically and with documentation (yes, one does have to say that these days) part Native American, (Wampanoag, Cheyenne and more), African, European (French, Spanish, Irish, Scottish, English, German, and a few more) and Jewish. I consider myself tri-racial. In America, I am often considered black by both European and African-Americans without any thought to the rich complexity of American and world history that had to come about to create someone like me.

African, European and Native women who make up me.

Unlike Dolezal, who is, in her mind, black without even a nod to her "fictitious" mixed genetic inheritance (Native American and European), I have not been able to reject the other branches of my family tree so entirely. Maybe it is because she hates her parents and rejects them out of hand, or because she is white and has never known what it is like to be mixed-race or more importantly mixed-cultured, that she feels she can jump on the one-race bus with both feet. Maybe it is because she has never stood in a mirror like I have and wondered where she got those almond eyes or high cheekbones, or wondered who she laughs like or why her hair comes out of her head in s-shaped curls.

Dolezal, as a European American, knows her family history. She probably heard from her parents about her relatives that were Czech and German and why she has that funny nose and freckles.  I had to dig through silence, slavery, shame and Ancestry.com to find out why I looked the way I did. I had to take DNA tests to discover what part of Africa my family came from. I had to look through census after census until I found those that proved I had Wamponoag ancestors because supposedly no Native Americans and Africans ever got married and had kids together. I had to go through spitting in vials to find out I was Jewish on both sides of my family. I had to look through historical documents to find out I was part Scottish and German. I had to fight for years and pierce through a tragic family history, lies of my mother, secrets of her mother, and stories of my father's grandmother to find out who I was. So, I am not settling for just black like Ms. Dolezal can because she never had to struggle with identity and racism. She knew she was white and hated it or her parents. I don't have family stories to throw away or a family bible to burn that tells me who I am related to or where I came from. I didn't have the privilege of  turning my back on my past since it was a shut and locked door I had to take a crow-bar to just to open it and peek inside.

Musty old book that holds my rich  history.

Ms. Dolezal has her own psychological problems. She decided to solve them by changing race, becoming the fairest of them all, and ruling in the NAACP. She has said everything the NAACP hierarchy wanted to hear: "Though I am fair, I only identify as black. I don't care about that other parts of me," and she was rewarded with a high position. She told a lie that I as a real mixed-race person will not tell. She told a fairy-tale about race, color, and culture and made a simple and very neat choice. For me, a real person who is mixed-race (and my family has been for hundreds of years), it is not so simple. I do not go one way or another when it comes to race. I can't because all of that is who I am, and I feel lucky to know it. Neither I nor my family members have been rewarded for our differences. My uncle shaved off his straight hair and kept it short all his life so not to get his ass kicked for looking too white.  My father had to fight white and black boys who wanted to beat him up because he looked too much and too little like each race.  I have been called the "N" word by whites. I have experienced reverse racism from black people because they think since I am lighter-skinned,  I get more privileges, and they want to make sure I suffer like them (for all you who think that way, be contented, I have suffered, but thanks, it's made me stronger.)

The choice to accept all our colors and refuse to deny the truth about ourselves and history has led to us being ostracized, called liars, laughed at and ridiculed for not stating "I am black " but stating  "I am a person of many colors and cultures."  To be multi-racial is for me to be an outsider, always trying to find where I fit. In my life, I find at times I fit everywhere and nowhere. I am a cultural chimera.

My Chimera-self. Scared yet?

I would not be anything else. In fact, I refuse to be less than what I am to make anyone happy or make my life easier and more successful like Ms. Dolezal. If she wants to be mixed-race,  wants to be Native, African and European like me and wants to imitate me, then I will tell her what my history has taught me, grow a pair, and accept who she is really and be proud of that. I know I am.

Me and my German Valkyrie ancestresses!

Candice Raquel Lee
Author of  The Innocent: A Love Story  

and Effed Up: An Abnormal Romance