Calls are being heard to “decolonize” Thanksgiving and replace it with “Truthsgiving” —  but not without passionate pushback from defenders of that great gluttonous tradition that predates America itself.

Advocates for indigenous rights are demanding a rethinking of the country’s most celebrated holiday, arguing that it neglects the colonial brutalities suffered by Native Americans. To many Americans, though, the pilgrim’s feast in 1621 set the stage for one of the few moments in the year when people can come together, united by family, formality, and feast. 

That is “the sanitized version of Thanksgiving,” argues a chef and activist from the Oglala tribe in South Dakota, Sean Sherman. This image “neglects to mention the violence, land theft, and subsequent decimation of Indigenous populations,” he wrote in an article in the Nation on Monday. “Needless to say, this causes tremendous distress to those of us who are still reeling from the trauma of these events to our communities.”

One should instead practice “Truthsgiving,” a hashtag that flooded TikTok videos last year. That’s the advice of attorney and co-founder of the Lakota People’s Law Project, which fights for civil rights for Natives, Chase Iron Eyes. “Our cherished national myth,” he writes in the Nation, “is that Thanksgiving originated with Natives welcoming friends who were fleeing religious persecution and then celebrating the harvest together.” 

The meal was not co-hosted between the Natives and the pilgrims, Mr. Eyes says, but rather as part of “a mutual defense pact” that likely necessitated the Native’s participation. As such, he asserts that “aliens in a foreign land need to invent new myths and identities to provide themselves with a sense of people, purpose, and place.”

While pursued with passion, these critiques appear to be landing on the deaf ears of the 79 percent of Americans who celebrate Thanksgiving, topping Memorial Day and Christmas. “This kind of protest is not going to go far,” the former deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal, Melanie Kirkpatrick, tells the Sun. “Americans like the holiday too much to cancel it.”

Some say this cancellation would be anti-family and anti-American. “If you succeed in problematizing and canceling all of America’s shared civic holidays and rituals,” shares a writer for The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf, “what do you think is going to happen next?” He says this will only hurt social justice efforts. Another user criticized Mr. Sherman and Mr. Eyes for attacking “one of the few holidays where FAMILIES come together that are not based on a religion.”

Thanksgiving is indeed entwined with national identity. Throughout American history, the holiday has held political import for its unifying power, which Ms. Kirkpatrick explored in her book, “The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience.”

President Washington’s first act in office was to call for a national Thanksgiving to give thanks to the Constitution. President Lincoln called upon Northerners and Southerners to share in gluttony while the nation was divided by war. President Franklin D. Roosevelt used his Thanksgiving Day proclamation in 1941, amid economic turbulence at home and rising fascism in Europe, to promote “the establishment on earth of freedom, brotherhood, and justice.”

To critics of Thanksgiving, though, the values of freedom and justice are precisely what is at stake each November, which is also Native American Heritage Month. The Native-led organization, United American Indians of New England, has held a protest on Thanksgiving day at Plymouth Rock every year since 1970. The group says this National Day of Mourning at the site of arrival of the Mayflower pilgrims is “a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native people, the theft of Native lands and the erasure of Native cultures.”

The widely-held view of Thanksgiving as “a harmonious feast,” says Mr. Sherman, “obscures the harsh truth, one steeped in colonialism, violence, and misrepresentation.” He urges Americans to explore the Indigenous experience on the holiday — noting that one of the first documented thanksgivings in 1637 followed a colonial celebration of their massacre of a Pequot village.

Mr. Sherman points out that items on a traditional Thanksgiving menu — turkey, corn, beans, pumpkins, cranberries, sweet potatoes, and wild rice — are features of Native American culture. Americans should therefore still embrace these foods, he says, in order to support Native American producers and practices.  “I do not think we need to end Thanksgiving. But we do need to decolonize it.”

Members of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe tribe brought a few deer to the feast and helped the pilgrims plant several of the dishes served on the table since the settlers didn’t have sugar or flour, Ms. Kirkpatrick explains. The Washington Post reported in 2021 that the 2,800 members of the tribe “still regret” these contributions.

“I respect the fact that Native Americans use Thanksgiving as a way to speak about the history of their people, because it’s important to remember,” says Ms. Kirkpatrick. “I also think that non-Native Americans should understand that history. But at the same time, the Thanksgiving holiday we celebrate today isn’t just about the pilgrims and the Indians. There are many threads to this holiday.”

The history itself is multi-faceted. The pilgrims did not call their first feast “Thanksgiving,” Ms. Kirkpatrick explains. The name only appeared a few years later when the Governor of Plymouth Colony, William Bradford, invoked it to give thanks to God at the end of a drought. Steeped in the Judeo-Christian heritage, the holiday, Ms. Kirkpatrick says, “was associated with taking care of those who are less fortunate.” 

In the early 18th century, New England celebrated Thanksgiving as a day of religious services and a family feast, a culinary tradition which pioneers brought to the American West. It wasn’t until 1863 that Lincoln made it a national holiday, following the pleas of influential writer Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, who has been called the “Godmother of Thanksgiving.”

While much has changed since 1621, food is still the great American unifier. The first feast at Plymouth “was a time of amity, peace, and friendship, before all the wars and nastiness happened before the English and the Native Americans,” says Ms. Kirkpatrick. “The spirit of that day prevails today as well.” Four hundred years in, Thanksgiving doesn’t appear to be going anywhere. 

Mr. Sherman and Mr. Ears did not immediately provide a comment to the Sun.