Native News Network

American Indian family discusses Thanksgiving.

MAY LEE JOHNSON

Tribune Staff Writer

At home in Niles on Wednesday evening, Jim Topash, 75, center, and his daughters, Jane Olsen, left, and Monica Topash, talk about how they spend Thanksgiving and what it means to them. They are all members of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians.

NILES -- Jim Topash, his wife, Mariann, and their family will enjoy a feast today.

"Thanksgiving is an American tradition," said the 75-year-old Topash, a member of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians. "Thanksgiving was a native tradition long before the Pilgrim feast."

The Topash family will gather for a traditional Indian dinner that includes deer or squirrel.

His daughters, Jane Olsen and Monica Topash, will join the family, but they will not celebrate Thanksgiving.

Their view of Thanksgiving is quite different from the fable of Pilgrims and Indians sitting down to a friendly feast in 1621.It's a day for them to remember how Indians suffered as North America was colonized, and it is also a day to be thankful.

"When I was young," Olsen said, "whenever my sister and I heard the words 'land of the Pilgrim's pride' in 'America the Beautiful,' we just hummed through it instead of saying the words."

For them, it's a reminder that the European invasion led to the death of some 10 million to 30 million people.

"Most people think of the first Thanksgiving and the Indians and the Pilgrims sitting down to eat together, all eating happily together," Monica Topash said. "That was not how it was at all. These were not merely 'friendly Indians.'

"They had already experienced European slave traders raiding their villages for a hundred years or so, and they were wary -- but it was their way to give freely to those who had nothing."It wasn't until more than 200 years after the popularized "first" Thanksgiving that the day was given special recognition.

Thanksgiving was first established nationally by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 as a way of mending a war-torn country. Congress did not sanction it as a national holiday until 1941.

The sisters would prefer that Thanksgiving be an opportunity to educate and to honor the contributions American Indians have made to this nation and the Michiana area that they have been a part of all of their life."When my sister and I go to do presentations at school, we try to wear our regalia (traditional outfits)," Olsen said. Olsen is a teacher at St. Bavo School in Mishawaka

"It allows us to explain that this is what we wear on special occasions, not all the time. Sometimes, children think of Indians with the feathers, and that's just not who we are."

"Most people don't understand our culture," Monica Topash said. "Our family is very religious, and we are not like the Indians seen on television.

"Thanksgiving to me has never been about Pilgrims. It is about family getting together and enjoying each other."

"As a child of a Native American family, you are part of a very select group of survivors," Monica Topash said. "And I learned that my family possessed some 'inside' knowledge of what really happened to those poor, tired masses."So, let's get educated and the healing can begin."

Staff writer May Lee Johnson: