Thanksgiving is one of the biggest holidays in the United States of America and is unofficially marked as the start of the Christmas Season. The standard procedure dictates that once the Thanksgiving decorations come down, the Christmas decorations will go up. The whole country then gets into the holiday season while also welcoming the winter months.

The traditionally family event where the whole extended family and friends get together to have a large meal while saying thanks for all the amazing stuff that happened in the past year, has been commercialised quite a bit in recent times. The modern Thanksgiving is more about shopping, mega deals and the Super Bowl.

Along with commercialisation comes the establishment of certain icons which generally have very little to do with the holiday in general. Just like the mistletoe has no place in the biblical sense behind Christmas or the Easter Bunny has for Easter, pumpkins and turkeys which are synonymous with Thanksgiving have no historical relevance whatsoever. The original Thanksgiving meal consisted of freshly killed deer, assorted wildfowl, fishes like cod and bass and corn.

The history of the Thanksgiving meal itself is quite tragic. The Europeans who landed on the shores of America were invited to share a meal with the Native Americans. The White Europeans then went on to kill all the members of the Native American tribe and have a meal by themselves. They were thankful for the bounty that God had blessed them with. It is the tradition of this meal that is carried on even today. The context of the meal has changed over time and it’s more about coming together rather than the gruesome history it represented.

The “woke generation” or the proponents of “cancel culture” has other ideas about Thanksgiving. Despite being recognised as a national holiday and with heavy economic implications behind it, Thanksgiving’s existence is threatened.

Many people across the USA have taken offence to the gross misappropriation of a historical event and the significance it holds for the Native American people. They argue that this event should be a more sombre event where we pay homage to the fallen Native Americans on that fateful day rather than celebrate it with nauseating excess.

“It should no longer be called Thanksgiving Day, it should be called Apology Day. What we owe the Native American people is an actual apology for what transpired that day,” claims 22-year-old history student Marie Stevens. “I don’t understand what we are being thankful for on that day. This is a chance for us to repent our mistakes and observe a day of shame for what our ancestors did.”

20-year-old Nick Grahame also voiced similar concerns while saying, “What we are doing is rubbing salt on the wounds of the Native Americans. Why can’t we come together and accept the fact that we stole this country from them? We have enough celebrations that glorify us anyways. As a straight white male in America, I am sick of all the privilege that is being shoved down my throat.”

We spoke to the 24-year-old blogger and the leader of the protest that we were witnessing and she had some interesting observations. “First we loot them, then we sideline them, then we try to wipe them out. When nothing else succeeds, we throw ourselves a victory party. This is what the true meaning of Thanksgiving is. We are celebrating the genocide of a race of people. this should be stopped and we as a group are taking this nationwide this year.”

“We are going to occupy Wall Street and demand that the corporate honchos, the investment bankers and entrepreneurs who have made this holiday to become this pathetic commercial monstrosity stop what they are doing. We will mobilise the youth from all parts of the country. Wall Street must answer for the condition of the Native American people.”

We continued to probe why they were targetting Wall...