by Ray Levy Uyeda This story was originally published at Prism. This year’s Thanksgiving holiday marks the 400th year of a meal shared between early settlers and Wampanoag Native peoples that laid the foundation for American mythos of collaboration and cross-cultural unity—or so the story goes. In a broad cultural shift, more schools are considering moving away from the narrative most educated in the public school system are familiar with: one of benevolent and vulnerable pilgrims who sought alliances with Native peoples. In reality, Thanksgiving was a massacre, one that kicked off the enslavement of Native peoples, colonization of Native-stewarded land, and kidnapping of Native children for their placement in assimilationist boarding schools. Thanksgiving is the origin point for the story of how America became a nation. For Native peoples, that story connotes something different than it does for white people, who, in response to calls for accurate and racially just education, are pushing back against school officials. The pushback against school officials’ new desire to highlight the historical inaccuracies and harm of Thanksgiving includes a critique of what now might be a familiar refrain: critical race theory.  Read more