The Invention of Thanksgiving

National Museum of the American Indian associate curator Paul Chaat Smith (Comanche) gives an illustrated chat on the invention of Thanksgiving -- a day "that isn't like any other day of American life."

"The way it's corny, it's cartoonish and kitsch is kind of a protective layer to sort of not get too direct about it. So, underneath all those things, Thanksgiving is about trying to come to terms with this very difficult truth about the United States: that the country is a national project that came about at a great expense to native people."

I appreciate your research, Paul. From my childhood (and for many years after that) I carried with me the 1621 Wampanoag-Pilgrim dinner as a heralded first instance of settler-indigenous conciliation. Yet as David Garneau says of Reconciliation -- "There was no conciliation to begin with."