11/24/2005

Thanksgiving For the Conquerors:
On this war-torn Thanksgiving, with the possibility of a couple of thousand more bodies being found along the Gulf Coast in the forgotten wreckage of Katrina, let us pause to remember the Narragansett, the Indian tribe that believed something fucked up was happening when the pasty-ass English arrived in Massachusetts. Not only did a deal with the British allow the Puritan-allied Mohegan to tomahawk the Narragansett sachem Miontonimo, but during King Philip's War in 1675, the Narragansett, who had been allied with Philip's Wampanoag people, holed up in a fort in Kingston, Rhode Island. There, an army of 1000 colonial soldiers, along with some Mohegan's, essentially wiped out the Narragansett.

And then they all sat down and ate corn, turkey, and mashed potatoes together. With pie. Everyone loves pie.

Here's the Narragansett Prayer of Thanksgiving:

We walked here once, Grandfather.
These trees, ponds, these springs and streams,
and that big flat rock across the water over there.
We used to meet you over there, remember, Grandfather?
And we would dream, dance, and sing
and after a while, make offerings.
Then we would sing the traveling song and would go our ways
and sometimes we would see your signs on the way to our lodges.
But something happened, Grandfather.
We lost our way somewhere, and everything is going away.
The four leggeds, the trees, springs and streams, even the water,
where the laughing whitefish goes,
and the big sky of many eagles is saying goodbye. Come back, Grandfather, come back!
Thank you, Great Spirit, for all the things that Mother Earth gives!