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  • (laughing)

  • - And I'm thankful for my Kindergarten class

  • who made these wonderful crafts to celebrate Thanksgiving.

  • - After the Native Americans helped the Pilgrims

  • survive their first winter in America,

  • the Puritans invited them to share

  • the first Thanksgiving.

  • - [All] Awe!

  • - Oh, these are adorably (paper rips) wrong.

  • - A five-year-old made that.

  • - Based off of the lies that you taught them.

  • - Excuse me?

  • - Oh, it's not your fault,

  • these are full of half truths and historical propaganda.

  • - I thought the Native Americans and the Pilgrims

  • were, like, besties, or whatever.

  • - At best, the Pilgrims and Wampanoags

  • could be described as "political allies."

  • By the time the Pilgrims showed up,

  • not only were two-thirds of the Massachusetts tribes

  • completely wiped out by European slave owners

  • and diseases, the Pilgrims were constantly at war

  • with the indigenous people and routinely tortured them.

  • - But what about Squanto, the Native American

  • who learned English to help out the Pilgrims?

  • - He was actually a slave that was hauled off to Europe

  • and then he learned English so that he could escape.

  • - But they did celebrate it every year, right?

  • - Not exactly, the next one was 16 years later

  • and, unfortunately, it was because the Puritans

  • were celebrating the massacre of the Piqua tribe.

  • Back then, Thanksgiving was also for families,

  • specifically, murdering them.

  • - Okay, we get it!

  • History's awful, the Puritans were terrible,

  • and now we have to let our children know that the

  • holiday started with tons of killings.

  • Happy?

  • - Well, we actually have just about everything wrong

  • with the Thanksgiving myth.

  • Definitely didn't wear these buckle hats.

  • Didn't land on Plymouth Rock.

  • And as for that turkey--

  • - Oh no, not the turkey.

  • - More like venison, fowl, and eel.

  • - Geez!

  • - Oh!

  • - Who cares about how this stupid holiday

  • got started anyway?

  • - Exactly.

  • In George Washington's 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation,

  • the settlers aren't mentioned, not even once.

  • Thanksgiving wasn't celebrated nationwide until 1863

  • when this guy declared it a national holiday during

  • the Civil War in order to bring the country together.

  • That's why all of our foods are from the 19th century.

  • - So Lincoln came up with the whole Indian/Pilgrim story?

  • - Nope, that myth didn't catch on 'til the 1900s,

  • after we had fought and killed all the Native Americans.

  • And then we put it in textbooks as fact

  • because, America!

  • But, the food is really good

  • and if you ignore all the terrible history,

  • you know, like the murdering, the raping,

  • the pillaging, still kind of a great holiday.

  • Mmm.

  • - So the Mayflower is a lie?

  • - Why do we eat cranberry sauce?

  • - What about stuffing?

  • - Is Black Friday really just a capitalist conspiracy

  • to get poor people to buy things so we can't truly

  • live out a populous revolt?

  • (everyone talking at the same time)

  • - I am never telling you the truth ever again.

  • One historical narrative says that the Pilgrims

  • were off firing their guns when the Wampanoag tribe

  • just showed up, presumably, to find out

  • why the white folks were shooting up the place,

  • which is a question that we still ask this very day.

(laughing)

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