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How much is our Thanksgiving tradition based on real events that transpired sometime in the fall of 1621 in Plymouth, Massachusetts? And why does it matter anyway? Don't all nations have feel-good traditions that are partly based on facts, but mostly predicated on myths?  Professor David Silverman answers these questions and more. For example, he shares with us that Europeans had been in contact with the Wampanoag Native Americans, who are the "Indians" of our Thanksgiving tradition, since at least 1524. And that the Pilgrims were guided to Plymouth by at least one crew member who touted its advantage - hint: all its native inhabitants had died of disease, leaving houses and fields empty and available for the would-be English settlers. And while the turkey was certainly on the menu, so was eel!  

In this episode, Professor Silvermans explains the aftermath of that first Thanksgiving. And by way of follow-up, I ask him to explain why it is that some Native Americans observe a Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving.  Professor Silverman is the author of This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving, a 2019 book. Click this link for this book's Amazon page.  Professor Silverman has written several other books about the history of Native Americans, which are listed on his academic homepage is along with his other publications, projects and honors. 

Direct link to Professor Silverman's academic homepage: https://history.columbian.gwu.edu/david-silverman 

To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you. 

Minneapolis gets to keep its police department. That's the outcome of last week's ballot vote. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called for police officers "to make sure they are working directly with the community to keep us safe." In our podcast conversation, Professor Jocelyn Simonson brings attention to the complexity of the term "community". What is exactly a community and who is in it? Frankly, before this podcast conversation, I was under the impression that the term community had a geographical definition, such as the community within a precinct. But I now understand that a community can be much more diverse than that restrictive definition, and it may include citizens whose voices are not heard or are ignored. The term community is important because it goes to the heart of ordinary people's participation in the criminal system, which Professor Simonson also describes as bottom-up contestation, and it can include laws and ordinances, policing policies and courtroom watching. She also takes us through the history of America's police, how and when it was founded and when it began to receive federal funding for its growth and militarization.  

Professor Simonson, who writes and teaches about criminal law, criminal procedure, evidence, and social change at Brooklyn Law School, explores ways in which the public participates in the criminal process and in the institutions of local governance that control policing and punishment. In this episode, which was recorded prior to the ballot vote in Minneapolis, she also talks about her upcoming book on this subject. 

This is the link to her academic homepage: https://www.brooklaw.edu/Contact-Us/Simonson-Jocelyn, and it lists her research and provides information for her many publications - including those in popular journals such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, is provided in the detailed caption of this episode. 

Image attribution: phone of the masked man by Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash. Here are links for that image: https://unsplash.com/photos/MCF3EZcam9E and https://unsplash.com/@gmalhotra?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText.  

To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.

Did humans first migrate to America by crossing an ice-free land bridge from Asia? This is the familiar story of how Native Americans crossed the Bering Sea, during a time when it was dry land, from Siberia to Alaska. But here is the thing: the latest scientific evidence undermines this belief. According to a study published in the journal Science, human presence is unequivocally shown in America during a period between 21,000 to 23,000 years ago, a period in which glacial ice sheets would have presumably impeded the migration of humans from Asia to Alaska. 

To better understand the significance of this recent discovery, and to also better understand anthropology, including its history of racism, we spoke with Mr. Jonathan Marks, a Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Professor Marks teaches biological anthropology, human variation and human origins. He is the recipient of many awards and honors, which are listed on his academic homepage: https://anthropology.charlotte.edu/node/131

Among his many publications, Professor Marks is the author of the following books: