Pilgrims and indians4/3/2023 Many Indigenous people fast from sundown the night before to sundown the day-of to remember the hardship and genocide their ancestors faced, she says. While millions of fellow Americans carve turkeys to celebrate Thanksgiving, 21-year-old Kisha James attends the National Day of Mourning every year. 27, 1970, to commemorate the first National Day of Mourning. Instead, he and a group of supporters met atop Coles Hill in Plymouth on Nov. Wamsutta Frank James refused to give the edited speech, his granddaughter says. “They were quite angry about the speech he wrote because it told the truth about Thanksgiving.” Wamsutta Frank James by statue of Massasoit, in Plymouth, MA on the National Day of Mourning in the 1970s. “They told him that he absolutely under no circumstances could give the speech that he was planning on giving and they offered to write him a different speech,” she says. Her grandfather’s speech didn’t praise the pilgrims as their descendants wanted. Under the guise of editing for spelling and grammar, their true motivation was to check the content, Kisha James says. The banquet organizers invited Wamsutta Frank James to speak on one strict condition: He needed to provide a copy of the speech in advance. In 1970, the descendants of the pilgrims wanted to hold a banquet to celebrate the anniversary of the Mayflower landing in Plymouth and asked a Wampanoag man named Wamsutta Frank James to make a speech, says his granddaughter, Kisha James. The United American Indians of New England declared Thanksgiving a National Day of Mourning 50 years ago. But many Native Americans say Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the slaughter of millions of Indigenous people and the theft of their lands by outsiders. The so-called first Thanksgiving has been celebrated and taught to schoolchildren as the origin story of what would later become the United States. This year marks the 400th anniversary of pilgrims arriving at what’s now known as Plymouth, Massachusetts. (Courtesy of guest) This article is more than 2 years old. In the box are the Wampanoag human remains he and other National Day of Mourning protesters liberated from the Pilgrim Museum in 1974. Kisha James' grandfather (center) carrying a box.
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