In March 2022, the Port Neches-Groves (PNG) high school band and drill team made news when their performance in a Disney World parade received backlash online.
The Texas school’s mascot is “The Indians,” and their fight song contains racist imagery conflating Native American culture with violence and savagery. At Disney’s request before the performance, the drill team, known as the “Indianettes,” removed their native headdress, which is still a part of their uniform.
However, the fight song didn’t escape the cameras in the crowd. Disney and PNG went viral on social media, reminding many that the struggle against cultural colonialism is still very much alive.
For their part, Disney issued an apology and promised to put measures in place to prevent the incident from happening again.
The PNG community, however, expressed dismay and doubled down. The school made all its social media accounts private, shielding it from the negative online responses it was receiving. Since 2022, they have made no movement toward changing their mascot or school uniforms, and their football stadium is still called “The Reservation.”
I have a close friend who grew up in PNG schools and still has strong ties to the community. He says many of them remain dismayed at the backlash. They claim they are “honoring” Native American culture, even though various tribal leaders have been telling them for years how offensive they are being.
Some locals claim their community is the target of “cancel culture.”
Recently, another friend sent a photo in a group chat of the child of someone she knows wearing a construction paper cut-out of a feather headdress. A cross was painted on his shirt, just above frayed fringes. He stood next to a little girl dressed as a pioneer woman.
The photo was taken at an elementary school’s “Thanksgiving Pow Wow.”
Yes, here in the year of our Lord, 2024.
According to data from the National Congress of American Indians, around a thousand K-12 schools across the U.S. still have Indigenous-themed mascots. In addition, the myth of an original Thanksgiving meal that was a peaceful gathering between Pilgrims and Native Americans continues to be perpetuated in schools and other public spaces.
It seems almost impossible to disentangle ourselves from the violence and lies.
Our country’s denial of its genocidal past and the creation of myths in service to that denial are well documented. Anyone with an internet browser and ears to hear can learn from a wealth of Indigenous voices explaining why our cultural stories and appropriations are harmful to them.
It also doesn’t take an expansive imagination to understand why educational programs designed to expose our myths are dismissed as “woke” and “cancel culture.”
At best, we don’t want to experience the discomfort of seeing our history for what it is.
At worst, we want to revive and perpetuate our history for what it was.
But the same imagination, open ears and internet browsers that teach us about the harm cultural appropriation can inflict on Indigenous communities can also show us how they harm those who perpetuate cultural appropriation.
The wisdom of Jesus passed down through prophets such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. reveals that violence harms the violated and the violator.
We lose something of our potential as image-bearers of God when we refuse to heed the cries of the oppressed. In placing a veneer of rightness and righteousness onto our imperial appropriations, we lose the ability to name our darkness and to be healed of it by the gifts of God. Without that healing, we lose the possibility of reaping the benefits of thanks-giving.
It’s good to be reminded that Thanksgiving isn’t exclusive to the United States. Cultures across history and borders have set aside times to bring in the harvest and to recognize that all good gifts come from some place beyond us.
Many of those Thanksgiving celebrations come from those on the receiving end of the sword.
Knowing that gratitude doesn’t need our myths to be meaningful can help us name and repent from our collective sins. Only then can we participate in Thanksgiving celebrations that are right and righteous.
Senior Editor at Good Faith Media.
