Tags
Alaaska Native Heritage Center, Alaska, Alaska Natives, Education, Indians, Native Americans, Schools, Thanksgiving, Yupiit
Take a look at this image from an old Thanksgiving celebration. It’s part of an exhibit at the Alaska Native Heritage Center (which is definitely worth a visit if you are ever in Anchorage).
These children are Alaska Natives, in this case Yupiit, which would have placed them a long way from New England during the mythic days of the first Thanksgiving celebrations. Still, I can’t help but shake my head at the notion that someone thought to costume these ‘Eskimos’ as ‘Indians’ for Thanksgiving.
So yeah, that happened.
northierthanthou 
This is a really interesting photo. I wonder when it was taken, before or after statehood?
The teacher at my grandson’s (he is in the fifth grade) school asked the students about the meaning of Thanksgiving or how it started, etc. He raised his hand and proceeded to inform them something like this, ” That is when the Pilgrims slaughtered a bunch of defenseless Indians.” Apparently, it caused a minor breakdown in class, including one girl crying, saying that she is Indian…I might point out that my grandson is part Navaho and bothers to investigate his history. You do not want to get me started on stuff like or maybe you do.
stuff like this–I think I left out a word.
Well, I think for a grade-school pageant a teacher must work with available resources. I was an “Indian” one year in my almost-all-white school. This kind of thing is probably off the political incorrectness scale nowadays, but getting a kid to imagine being another person of another race in another time could sow the seeds of empathy and openmindedness.
I think they are just trying to be in costume of another race and playing dress up like lots of us have dressed up as Indians as a child.
The fact that people would dress as an Indian to actually celebrate Thanksgiving is beyond me however. Are people celebrating their demise at American hands? Or the fact the Indians first tried to share what they had with the first Americans and then we’ll just ignore the slaughtering part?!