THANKSGIVING is an American public holiday.
It is traditionally a day for families and friends to get together for a special meal.
This meal often includes a turkey stuffing, potatoes, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie and vegetables.
Thanksgiving Day is a time for people to give thanks for what they have.
It has been an annual holiday in America since 1863.
However, not everyone sees Thanksgiving Day as a cause for celebration.
Every year since 1970, a group of Native Americans and their supports have staged a protest for a National Day of Mourning at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts on Thanksgiving Day.
The day after Thanksgiving Day, America celebrates American Indian Heritage Day.
This is not a civic holiday although some individual states have taken legislative action to make it a state holiday.
American Indian Heritage Day is observed with activities, programmes and ceremonies that promote the historical and present day status of Native Americans.
The day is also used to encourage elementary and secondary schools to educate students about the history, achievements and contributions of Native Americans.
This year, American Indian Heritage Day is observed on the same day as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
This is not a public holiday, but a day of observance.
The United Nations (UN) Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and the Division for the Palestinian Rights of the Secretariat organise an annual exhibit on Palestinian rights or a cultural event with the Mission of Palestine to the UN.
Coming back to the National Day of Mourning; most schoolchildren are taught that native Americans helped the pilgrims and were invited to the first Thanksgiving feast.
The official line is that, the pilgrims fled a volatile political environment in England to Holland in Netherlands.
Concerned with losing their cultural identity, they arranged with a group of English investors to establish a colony in North America.
The first Thanksgiving is said to have been a feast to celebrate the pilgrims’ first harvest in North America.
In an account by one of the attendees, Edward Winslow, the feast lasted three days, and it was attended by 90 native Americans and 53 pilgrims.
Young Americans’ conceptions of native Americans often develop out of media portrayals and classroom role playing of the events of the First Thanksgiving. This conception is both inaccurate and potentially damaging to the native Americans.
Before the pilgrims arrived and established their first colony in Plymouth, it had been the site of a Pawtuxet village.
The village was wiped out by a plague (introduced by English explorers looking to grab a piece of the New World land) five years before the arrival of the pilgrims.
An estimated 72 000 to 90 000 lived in southern New England before contact with Europeans.
One hundred years later, the native American population in that area had been reduced by 80 percent due to diseases, and enslavement by Europeans.
Ironically, the first official ‘Day of Thanksgiving’ was proclaimed in 1637 by Massachusetts Governor, John Winthrop.
He did so to celebrate the safe return of English men from Mystic, Connecticut. These men massacred 600 Peqouts that had laid down their weapons and accepted Christianity.
To the native Americans, Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of their people, the theft of their lands and the continued relentless attack on their culture.
The National Day of Mourning is a day to protest racism and oppression which native Americans continue to experience.
In a way the Palestinians and native Americans are very similar.
Both are victims of ethnic cleansing, colonisation and settler colonialism.
They are a people far too familiar with death, occupation and bogus peace processes and negotiations that have only resulted in them losing more of their land.
They have been deprived access to places that have special religious and spiritual significance.
Religion defines a person and not being able to exercise certain rites and ceremonies because of settler colonialism and lack of access to traditional shrines is a violation of the rights of the Palestinian people and native Americans.
Poverty and unemployment are rampant among Palestinians in Palestine and among the native Americans living on reservations.
Those who have the opportunity to venture out to the outside world are met with a shocking realisation that they are not welcome and viewed as strange at best.
Most important in the connections between Palestinians and native Americans is the American government.
America and Israel were two of the nine countries that voted against the General Assembly Resolution 67/19 in 2012 that granted Palestine a non-member observer State status.
The importance of this resolution is that Palestine is now allowed to start proceedings at the International Criminal Court against Israel.
In response to the vote, the US Congress announced that America would introduce legislation that would cut off foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority should it try and take Israel to the ICC and that the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s office in Washington would be forcibly closed.
While one can never choose their place of birth, I am thankful that I am proudly Zimbabwean.
I am thankful that the elections came and went in my home country and that when all was said and done; the people of Zimbabwe carried the day.