‘The gooey overlay of sweetness over genocide’: the myth of the ‘first Thanksgiving’
Some members of the Wampanoag Nation mark Thanksgiving as their National Day of Mourning
In 1970, Massachusetts was preparing to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers on the Mayflower.
The 53 surviving men, women and children who had left England in search of “religious freedom” are credited with starting America’s first successful colony, in Plymouth, in 1620. Their voyage to the so-called New World is celebrated by many Americans still as a powerful symbol of the birth of the United States.
