THANKSGIVING & BLACK FRIDAY

The holiday season is in full swing in the USA. Both Thursday and Friday are public holidays here. It's the busiest time of year on the road and at airports around the country for domestic travel. Thanksgiving feels a lot like Christmas in the UK, turkey with all the trimmings is the traditional meal.

HISTORY - ORIGIN OF THANKSGIVING
Diseases brought over by the early explorers claimed the lives of many Native Indians prior to the arrival of the Pilgrims in Plymouth, in December 1620. As a result the Pilgrims arrived into Plymouth amid the ruins of the Native American Indian villages of Pawtuxet. The Europeans were poorly prepared to survive. They did not bring enough food, and they arrived too late in the year to plant. They were not familiar with the area and lacked the knowledge, tools, and experience to effectively exploit the bounty of nature that surrounded them. For the first several months two or three of them died each day from scurvy, lack of adequate shelter, and poor nutrition. Once they discovered that the nearby Wampanoag Indians placed grain and precious ornaments with their dead they robbed the graves to steal the ornaments and to feed themselves. The Wampanoag Indians had become greatly outnumbered by their neighbouring tribe - The Narragansett Indians - as a result of the diseases that plagued their people. In order to counter pressure from the Narragansett to provide them with tributes, the Wampanoag Indians sought military alliance with the Europeans, who possessed formidable weapons. The Indians began to teach the Europeans how to survive and negotiated a peace treaty in which they pledged to maintain friendly relations with each other, and to come to each other’s aid in case of outside attack.

The Native American Indians understood that you cannot keep taking from the earth without giving something back and it has long been customary for them to have ceremonies in which they express their thanks for a bountiful harvest. Through the alliance, the Europeans learned to plant and care for Indian crops, to hunt and fish, and to do all the things that were necessary to partake of the natural abundance of the earth. As a result they overcame their inexperience and in the autumn of 1621 had their first successful harvest. They decided to celebrate their success with a harvest festival as the Indians did. Forty years later full scale war erupted between the colonists and the Indians and ended with the defeat of the Wampanoag. The Wampanoag had become a subjugated minority in the land of their ancestors. Today their language and land has been almost completely lost. There are currently two enclaves of Wampanoags in Massachusetts, one at Mashpee, the other at Gay Head on Martha’s Vineyard.

Black Friday follows Thanksgiving and refers to one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Stores offer huge savings and often open their doors at 5am for shoppers eager to purchase the best bargains. The 'Black' in Black Friday is a reference to the amount of spending that often pulls stores out of the red and back into the black.

source: The National Museum of the Native American Indian http://www.nmai.si.edu/education/files/harvest.pdf

I saw a trailer on TV here for a new film called 'Apocalypto' by Mel Gibson about the once great Mayan civilisation. A lot of the movie is shot at Tikal in Guatemala. It's due out here in the USA on 8th December.

INVASION NOT DISCOVERY

I spent most of yesterday at The National Museum of the Native American Indian being inspired and reminded about some of the original reasons why Make Travel Fair was created.

"Native spiritual values live in stories. Passed verbally from generation to generation, the stories preserve Native culture, languages and ways of explaining the universe."

Emil Her Many Horses, 2003

HISTORY
The original contact made by Christopher Columbus with the indigenous people of the Americas did not just deliver livestock and European culture but also a host of deadly microbes that withered the native population. With little immunity to European disease they fell victim to measles, small pox, influenza, mumps and other diseases. From 1492-1650 contagious disease claimed 9 out of 10 lives. This wave of disease that swept the Americas ahead of the Mayflowers Pilgrims arrival emptied entire Indian villages...the colonists settled in one and named it Plymouth. If European farmers had landed in the Bahamas with nothing more than good will, their diseases would have killed just the same. These health problems were unintended and unavoidable, even inevitable; what happened in its wake however was not.

We must support the indigenous communities that live amongst us and help them to retain their identity. The new world was not discovered but invaded.

"Art is a visual language and when contemporary Native artists
use the vocabulary of the tradition, they too, are keeping a language
alive. When they use that vocabulary in a new way, they show that we can
innovate yet remain connected to our Native identity. Embracing change
while holding on to our philosophical center, is survivance."

Jolene Rickard, guest curator, and Gabrielle, NMAI,
2004

Thanks to all who have contacted us regarding spelling mistakes and inconsistencies in the site design and content, all feedback is appreciated. It is still early days in our development and everything that is brought to our attention will be seen to and acknowledged gratefully. Whilst I am away in the USA the website will remain in hiatus except for this blog which I will be updating frequently. Any suggestions or submissions of articles can be made to any member of the team and will be greatly appreciated.