Thanksgiving

"The story upon which our Thanksgiving holiday is based is a story of Pilgrims and American Indians celebrating a feast together. Displaced Europeans migrated to a hostile new land, and with the assistance of the native people, learned to plant, harvest and hunt to survive.
"Thanksgiving was an occasion to give thanks to God, but it was every bit as much a celebration of the thanks of the newcomers to their mentors, who had served as instruments of God's grace.
"Sadly the history of American Indians in the U.S. mirrors the movement of the blessed from thankfulness to complacency. As former Europeans became more adept at developing our own networks in what soon became our nation, we became complacent about our relationship with our former friends.
"We forgot how thankful we had been that their contributions made our survival possible when we no longer worried about survival." -- The Rev. Leslie Belden, Parish associate of First United Presbyterian Church in Fayetteville.


Sadly those early settler were supplanted by greedy land grabbers.
They traded trinkets for land in New York.
They usurped land and forced the Native Americans into combative roles.
They eventually turned their hunting grounds into parking lots for their BMWs (business moguls wagons).
So, Thanks for Giving us guidance in how to survive.
Now the progenitors of those Native Americans must survive on reservations.
I have reservations about this dichotomy of diversity.
Do you have reservations for Thanksgiving dinner?
Are you sharing your provisions with any Native Americans?
Or do you go gamble at one of their casinos and give thanks to them for their teaching our ancestors to survive?
Maybe that's payback when you lose at one of their Cherokee casinos.
So, when you say your Thanksgiving prayer, say thanks to the first Native Americans for teaching the Pilgrims how to hunt, plant and harvest.
Remember your forefathers' heritage!!

What do you have to be thankful for?
A two-car garage?
A bountiful feast?
All those Occupy Northwest Arkansas may have an important message to deliver.
The 99 percent of us who struggle for survival aren't relying on Native Americans to help us in our struggle to pay our bills and purchase the necessities of life.
We're incumbent on the greed in Washington to finance trillions of war debts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the billions we owe China.
Let's just be thankful that those early Native Americans helped our forefathers and let's echo the thanksgiving that God gave us here in the USA.