Digging Deeper on Thanksgiving Lessons

From Dr. Khyati Joshi, The Institute for Teaching Diversity and Social Justice

Do you remember what you learned about Thanksgiving in school? Did a well-intentioned teacher have your class draw a hand turkey or dress up as pilgrims and Wampanoag? 

The Thanksgiving our students are often taught, the Thanksgiving that we were taught (or perhaps teach), is a tidy parable about kindness and overcoming differences that neglects a darker reality and erases the experiences of Native people.

We are a nation founded on violence and colonialism; it is our moral obligation as educators to teach our students the truth. 

There are certainly lessons and topics that call for artistic expression and character play; this is not one of them.

 Instead, we need to teach our students that, while a meal between pilgrims and Native Americans likely did happen, it did not spark a legacy of mutual understanding respect. Much violence followed in the ensuing decades, and the legacy of this violence is an America that has never fully atoned for its sinful origins and a group of people who still suffer tremendous rates of poverty and suicide.

Last year, NPR reported that a comprehensive review of U.S. history standards found that “87% [of content taught about Native Americans] only includes material about Native Americans prior to the year 1900.”

Let’s use Thanksgiving as a springboard for historically accurate, contextualized lessons about Native Americans. Whether you’re teaching 1st grade or high school, there are resources you can pull from to craft meaningful lessons for your students. I’ve highlighted some of those below.

Recommended Resources

A Racial Justice Guide to Thanksgiving for Educators and Families

The Center for Racial Justice in Education provides teaching strategies, curricular ideas and background information for teaching about Thanksgiving from a social justice perspective. I recommend starting with "Do American Indians celebrate Thanksgiving?" by The National Museum of the American Indian. The author of the article states:

"The Thanksgiving myth has done so much damage and harm to the cultural self-esteem of generations of Indian people, including myself, by perpetuating negative and harmful images to both young Indians and non-Indian minds. There are so many things wrong with the happy celebration that takes place in elementary schools and its association to American Indian culture; compromised integrity, stereotyping, and cultural misappropriation are three examples."

Teaching Thanksgiving in a Socially Responsible Way

This article from Teaching Tolerance provides you with a few different approaches to take with your students. Within that article, there is a great resource on a "contact timeline" between the Wampanoag Nation and non-native people. There are also several resources listed here from the National Museum of the American Indian which are worth exploring.