Today is Thanksgiving, a day I generally think of as a harvest festival, but it's also important to acknowledge the history behind the day as well. The Pilgrims are right up there with Christopher Columbus in the damages they inflicted on the indigenous people's of this continent, as well as the destruction of the land. It all began with them. Some of us were taught to revere them, and some of us weren't really taught about them at all. I honestly don't remember ever learning about them in school growing up. We never did Thanksgiving plays or pageants and I have no recollection of ever writing an essay on the topic. I always assumed it was more of an East Coast thing. After all, that's where the Pilgrims went. So, it's been easy to ignore throughout the course of my life. But then a few years ago, I got this list of ancestors from one of the ancestry websites my friend and I use to research our families. It was a huge list, broken into sections of what the person was known for. Things like Presidents, artists, politicians, etc. One of the sections was Mayflower passengers/Pilgrims, and it showed me exactly who I was related to them. So, for all my Driggers family out there, this is relevant to all of you too! We are related to no less than nine Pilgrims. I'm going to post Wikipedia links to each of them here so you can learn their names and see what their lives were like.
It's an important thing to acknowledge our own connection to this time period, and the colonizers who inflicted so much pain on others and damage to this land. We have a line in our family tree that has been here for a long time. That means it's done a lot of harm, and received a lot of benefits and privileges over the centuries. The very least we can do is to acknowledge that, and use the privileges and benefits to help fight for others, and the land.
Here is the list of our relatives from the Mayflower:
Edward Fuller-Our 11th Great Uncle
John Tilley-Our 12th Great Uncle
John Howland-Our 1st cousin, 12 times removed. The one who fell off on the way over...Spoiler alert, they fished him out of the water...
Peregrine White-Another 1st cousin, 12 times removed
Thomas Rogers-Our 1st cousin, 14 times removed
William Brewster-Another 1st cousin 14 times removed
Samuel Fuller-Our 3rd cousin 11 times removed
Myles Standish-Our 3rd cousin 12 times removed-Yes, THAT Myles Standish, the one they talk about on the Charlie Brown special. I literally never heard of him before that.
Henry Samson-Our 12th cousin 3 times removed
As you can see, none of them is a direct ancestor, but to still be connected in any way to so many people from this moment in history, demands acknowledgement.
And another thing that is good for us to do on this day is to acknowledge the land on which we currently live is occupied land.
This link shows the tribes native to Washington state. Check it out to see what tribe's land you live in.
We live on Duwamish land. This link has great resources about the Duwamish tribe and their culture.
This link shows the locations of Coast Salish sites and what colonizers put in their place.
I highly recommend looking at the above links to learn more about the land we're occupying and the people who we displaced and colonized to be here now. The last link is sobering to see places we know and use every day and seeing what they used to be. The story of how it came to be what it is now, can't possibly be a happy story, but it's important for us to learn it.
So, there you have it. Our own family has a huge connection to the Mayflower and the Pilgrims that isn't exactly something to be proud of, but is something we can acknowledge and use to fight for others. And there are a lot of websites out there to learn about the Indigenous cultures we displaced and killed to take over the land. Every day is a good day to educate yourself about it, but this day in particular, it's necessary.
