Wild Turkey

Genocide, gratitude, and the need for more

Last year the Turkish government officially changed the international spelling of their country’s name from ‘Turkey’ to ‘Türkiye’. One of their main reasons for doing so was to improve the international image of the country by dissociating it from the bird many Americans love to eat for Thanksgiving. However, a name change for the bird might have been more appropriate instead.

As we know from the story of the American Robin, European settlers were not necessarily known for their respect for or knowledge of the living beings they encountered in the regions they colonized. In this case, English settlers who first met this native bird mistakenly assumed it was a kind of Guineafowl. English people used to import Guineafowls from Turkey, and as such, with little poetic imagination, they referred to this big bird as ‘Turkey’. By the time they realized they made a mistake, the name was already so widespread that they simply never bothered to change it.

The story of Thanksgiving itself contains as little truth as the name of its main dish. In American schools, children learn that Thanksgiving was modeled on a 1621 harvest feast generously shared between the English settlers of Plymouth and the Native American Wampanoag people. Together, they celebrated the first successful harvest of the European settlers after an Indigenous American, Squanto, had shown them how to grow native crops such as corn and saved them from starvation. But this story is commonly accepted as a romanticization of history at best, and a cover story for genocide at worst.

The English settlers were only able to settle on the East Coast because by this time, after The Great Dying, up to ninety percent of the original inhabitants of this area were killed by diseases introduced by European settlers. Native Americans had no immunity nor cure for these invasive diseases, and as such around fifty-six million people died. At the time, that was about ten percent of the entire world population, making The Great Dying proportionally the largest event of human mortality in all of recorded history. Still, even after The Great Dying, various indigenous communities lived on the East Coast of Turtle Island (North America), which they commonly referred to as Dawn Land. The English settlers of Plymouth first settled on the ruins of the village of Patuxet, whose residents had all died in the epidemic. With colonial tastefulness, they claimed the territory as ‘New Plymouth’ and stole all provisions from the graves, homes, and storage units of the deceased.

Eventually, the Wampanoag people approached the English settlers to warn them they were trespassing on their land and to inquire about their intentions. When the settlers showed their eagerness to trade, the Wampanoag people, who were severely struck by the epidemic and were facing other serious political problems, decided it would be best to establish peace and a trade agreement with these English settlers. This peace treaty would last for about fifty years until the bloody King Phillip’s War in 1675, in which thousands of Native Americans were captured and killed for their resistance to occupation.

As a part of the peace treaty, Tisquantum (Squanto’s real name) taught the English settlers how to survive in Dawn Land and how to grow native crops such as corn. Tisquantum spoke English because earlier colonists had kidnapped him from Patuxet, enslaved him, and shipped him to Europe. He eventually managed to return to Dawn Land, only to find out that all of his people had been killed in The Great Dying. He was the only survivor from his entire village. When the English colonized the gravesite of his people, he saw an opportunity for survival and improvement of his social status, as hardly any Native Americans spoke English. But in the end, by teaching the English settlers how to survive, Tisquantum had given the English the skills they needed to settle permanently. Eventually, as the genocide progressed, Turtle Island became known as the United States of America. And this first harvest of the settlers became celebrated as the national holiday of Thanksgiving.

Every year for Thanksgiving around forty million Turkeys are slaughtered in the United States. Additionally, the holiday causes a tremendous amount of food waste, as an average of thirty percent of cooked Turkey meat gets wasted. That is twelve million Turkey’s worth of meat that goes to waste, every year. Twelve million lives lost in vain. Twelve million useless deaths whose body parts end up in landfills emitting methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Some say this death and waste is not in the spirit of Thanksgiving, but when reflecting upon the real history of the holiday, I’d say it’s the perfect way to celebrate the history of American genocide. The traditional ceremonial pardoning of one Turkey every year by the American President is the cherry on the colonial cake. What a metaphor for American decolonial efforts.

If Thanksgiving actually were a holiday of gratitude, it would look very different. We would not only invite our families, but also strangers to our tables. We would not only cater to our own endless appetite, but we would feed those who are truly hungry. Like Native Americans have done throughout the centuries, we would extend our gratitude to the food we consume. To the beings whose death provides for our life. If, in this cycle of life and death, we take the life of a plant or animal to continue our own existence, we would insist on honoring their death by ensuring that no part of their sacrifice was in vain. By making sure that every part of their being lives on in a new, honorable form. Many Native American communities used to make blankets and garments out of Turkey feathers. They used to make tools and even flutes out of their hollow bones. And they most definitely did not waste thirty percent of their meat. Like other traditional, well-rooted communities around the world, even if there were parts or organs of the bird they did not use for themselves, they would return them to their habitat to be consumed by other beings and decompose naturally, non-toxically, and with dignity.

In Surah Ibrahim, ‘Abraham’, the fourteenth chapter of the Qur’an, God reminds us: “If you are grateful, I will certainly give you more. But if you are ungrateful, surely my punishment is severe” (Qur’an 14:7). We often interpret this verse in a superficial way: If I say thanks for what I have, God will give me more, but if I forget to say thanks for what I have, God will take it away. I believe there’s an interpretation that contains greater wisdom. When we practice gratitude, our heart opens up to see the endless gifts bestowed upon us in every second. It is not that we literally get more. It is that we see that we already have enough. We see that the death of the Turkey not only gave us some meat. It gave us blankets, clothes, tools, music, medicine, togetherness, and essentially, life.

If on the other hand, we are ungrateful, we waste the meat of the Turkey. We overconsume, we pollute, we create diseases, and kill our planet until the death of the Turkey no longer gives us life, but in fact causes our death. Gratitude creates the blessing, and ingratitude creates the punishment. It is up to us whether we want to receive a blessing or a curse. Only fools would choose a curse over a blessing, wouldn’t they? Still, this is what we keep doing, over and over again. Turning the blessings of our food, our faith, our relationships, our possessions, and our lives into a curse.

It is interesting to note that the wasteful overconsumption of Turkeys for Thanksgiving is hardly ever criticized. Every year for Eid Al-Adha around ten million animals are slaughtered worldwide as opposed to the forty million Turkeys slaughtered every year for Thanksgiving in the US alone. Still, every year when Eid Al-Adha arrives, animal rights activists denounce the religious holiday as the greatest evil on our planet, but hardly a voice is raised when forty million birds are produced in inhumane factory farms and are mechanically killed every year for a non-religious settler-colonial holiday, and thirty percent of their meat goes to waste. Wastefulness is a great sin in the Islamic faith, tied to arrogance and ingratitude. In Surah Al-A‘raf, ‘The Heights’, the seventh chapter of the Qur’an, we are told: “Eat and drink, but do not waste. Surely He does not like the wasteful” (Qur’an 7:31). During Eid Al-Adha Muslims are obliged to share a third of their food with needy strangers and another third of their food with their communities, leaving only one third for themselves and their immediate family. Eid Al-Adha, if practiced according to its principles, is a celebration of gratitude. A true holiday of thanksgiving.

But is that truly how we practice Eid Al-Adha? Do we live up to the challenge of gratitude? Does our gratitude give us more than we could ever wish for, or does our ingratitude increase our everlasting craving for more? Many Muslims in the US gratefully embraced Indigenous solidarity during the protests against the genocide in Palestine. But how did we show our gratitude to our Native brothers and sisters this year? How did we show our solidarity with their struggle for justice? By eating a Turkey and celebrating Thanksgiving? Or did we join Indigenous protests on this day commonly referred to as the National Day of Mourning? Do we support our Indigenous siblings and neighbors and amplify the voices of the Land Back Movement? Or do our ethics only apply to Arab Muslims?

Let us be grateful, ya Shakur, O Most Grateful. Let us be truly grateful.