Happy holy days

Ah, Thanksgiving: our annual national celebration of the fine relations the "pilgrims" had with the "New World" inhabitants they slaughtered. Let us gorge ourselves on the stolen produce of the continent and glorify all that is good in the United States! Let's get drunk and watch a football game!

Actually, setting aside a "holy" day to gather with loved ones in community, to reflect on who we are, to consider where we come from and where we are going, ought to be a fine thing. A day for reflection and giving thanks should help us to better understand the social, historical and ecological relations which allow so many in the United States to spend our days overeating and watching TV.

I just have a hard time reconciling the historical basis of this holy day with the actual practice today.

Yes, there is the story of President Lincoln in 1863 declaring a national day of thanksgiving in the midst of the Civil War. And there is the heartwarming but phony story of "the first Thanksgiving" in which surviving "pilgrims" sat down to share food with the "Indians" who had saved them, giving thanks that not every colonist had died of starvation and exposure during the winter of 1621.

But there is also the true story of Gov. Henry Vane of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declaring a day of thanksgiving in 1637 following the slaughter of 700 men, women and children of the Pequot people in what is now Groton, Conn. The "pilgrims" rounded up the Pequots, shot many of them and burned the rest alive.

Appropriately, Groton is now home to a U.S. nuclear-submarine base, and to Electric Boat Corporation, which builds nuclear submarines. If only we would reflect on the historical continuity between the slaughter begun with torches and musket rifles in the Pequot War in 1637, and the slaughter that continues with laser-guided high-tech weaponry under our nuclear umbrella today. Pass the pumpkin pie, please.

In any event, some people do use Thanksgiving to reflect on the true history and meaning of the United States. If you are not trapped with a bunch of over-consuming relatives, check out "HARVEST: A First Nations' Reclamation of Thanksgiving," featuring First Nations poets and storytellers tomorrow at the Capitol Hill Arts Cooperative, 1621 12th St. on Capitol Hill. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and the show starts at 7. The cost is $5 to $10, no one turned away for lack of funds. It's advertised as a potluck, so bring something to share.

If you are sickened by the glorification of over consumption that is the holy-day season in the United Stats, celebrate Buy Nothing Day (BND) Friday. Started by the Adbusters Collective 11 years ago, BND is an international celebration of not consuming on the traditional opening day of the Christmas shopping season.

BND is a free-for-all of "culture jamming," decentralized and autonomous acts of resistance to consumer culture. In Seattle, a gathering is planned at Westlake Center at noon Friday to celebrate the ritual burning of The Gap. On the Eastside, there is a ritual taking place at Bellevue Square at 11:30 a.m. Of course, coming up with your own creative acts of culture jamming, rather than watching the spectacle of someone else's performance, is the essence of BND.

And finally, there is another modern holy day this week. N30 commemorates the successful mass uprising and shutdown of the World Trade Organization that took place in Seattle in 1999.

This year's N30 celebration is centered around a "resource share," an all-day gathering of social-service providers and community activists in Westlake Center to distribute food, clothing and information to people who need it. In this time of war and cutbacks in social spending, N30 will reflect on the systems of corporate and military rule that leave so many people with no access to the bounty of food and material goods that are produced. N30 imagines the possibilities of a true "new world order" that will provide for the needs of the people and the Earth, rather than the military and corporations. The resource share runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at Westlake Center in downtown Seattle.

HARVEST is produced by Knitbone Productions in collaboration with reBirth/Capitol Hill Arts Cooperative. Knitbone Productions is an ensemble of First Nations people of the Americas and Hawaii using theater, writing and story as tools for healing, continuance and decolonization. For more info, contact Knitbone@hotmail.com. For more info on BND and culture jamming, go to adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd. For more info on N30 or to contribute to the resource share, visit www.riseup.net/n30.