Thanksgiving evokes complex emotions for many Americans. The holiday has much symbolic and emotional work to accomplish: it is a celebration of families (however dysfunctional), a harvest festival, an occasion for civic parades, a last rest before entering the Christmas shopping gauntlet, and an official holiday (for most of us) from work and school. Buried beneath these functions, and distorted by kitsch, lies Thanksgiving's status as the United States' closest national equivalent to an Indigenous People's Day.* The holiday allegedly commemorates the first formal act of friendship, a 1621
