My Colombian Thanksgiving and a Word on Indigenous Peoples

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It is delightfully unfettered by divisive religious, material, or patriotic considerations and instead focuses solely on the commonly held important things in life: family, food, and football. Much to my surprise, I was able to score a turkey and a pan big enough to roast it in yesterday and was able to pull off a modest but satisfying turkey day meal with a few close friends.

While our deepest associations with this holiday have to do with quality family time, eating too much, and being trapped in airports or on the highway, my passing of the day outside of the United States has caused me to reflect on the historical foundations of the day and its place in the U.S. national identity, which in turn lead me to more questions to ask as I seek greater understanding of Colombia.

Anyone who has passed through grade school in the U.S. has had the experience of fashioning crude Pilgrim and Native American headgear out of construction paper (that most versatile of media) and re-enacting the First Thanksgiving. A warm and cozy display of inter-cultural harmony and brotherhood celebrating a successful harvest and survival in the New World.

What's left out of these adorable stagings is any recounting of the hundreds of Thanksgivings that followed that first one at Plymouth Plantation. The next few hundred years were marked by the near total destruction of Native American culture in North America through violence, persecution, disease, and aggressive expansionism by European settlers. Its an area we more often than not leave out of our national story and would just as soon like to forget (as evidenced by putting Andrew Jackson on the twenty dollar bill.)

Now I'm not trying to get up on a soapbox and preach about what we all know to be clearly recorded history. What spending Thanksgiving in Colombia made me think of is what I perceive to be the vastly different historical experiences of the indigenous people of Latin America versus Anglo America.

There is one statistic in particular that outlines this question with crystal clear relief. In Colombia, about 82% of the population is of mixed Amerindian and European ancestry and another 3.4% is of fully indigenous heritage. In the United States, those numbers are 0.9% and 0.74% respectively. The map below shows the level of indigenous population in the Americas. A full breakdown of these numbers for the Americas complete with sources can be found here.



Now, this difference is of course news to no one. However, this blog is about my journey towards deeper understanding of Colombian culture. Learning about the influence of both historic and contemporary indigenous populations on this country's culture is a vital part of that journey. Furthermore, I believe a comparative approach that explores the differences between Latin American versus Anglo American experiences with their respective indigenous populations will serve to greatly enrich the discussion. As such, I am officially adding this to the list of areas in which I want to cultivate deeper understanding via this blog.

Is there an anthropologist in the house? If anyone reading has any insight or resources to share, please leave a comment!