Thanksgiving provides us once again with an opportunity to introspect and appreciate our blessings. But for many Native Americans, the day is a reminder of all the slaughter, destruction and loss of lands inflicted on them by outsiders, starting with the pilgrims arriving in Massachusetts some 400...
US President Donald Trump announced a true bombshell this week when he informed the crowd he was addressing at a speech in Florida that it was time to prepare their defense in the growing “war on Thanksgiving.” Trump didn’t bother to mention who was waging this war, possibly because he...
For one day in the year on Thanksgiving, Americans hope to renew a sense of “belonging” to a fading culture. Once a year, on the fourth Thursday of November, Americans honor their imagined Puritan heritage, even if today only a tiny minority can trace their ancestry back to the...
Why does the US base its national narratives on myth rather than history? Lately, some Americans have called the world’s attention, yet again, to our society’s shocking and relentless insistence on ahistoricism. Xenophobic, fear-mongering responses to the global refugee crisis from...
Thanksgiving is a good time to remember that the vast majority of Americans migrated to the New World and that climate change is real. This week, Americans celebrated Thanksgiving. In a time-truncated society where people get a mere 15 days off and where distances are gargantuan, this national...
There is nothing to celebrate about Christopher Columbus. When the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus reached the shores of the Americas in 1492, it was by accident. He had been commissioned by the Spanish crown to find a passage to the East Indies, en route to a lucrative spice trade with...
