Change.org - Stop this racist editorial

Every year in honor of Thanksgiving, The Wall Street Journal publishes a pilgrim’s account of arriving in the Americas. They do this in spite of the fact that it’s full of racist remarks towards indigenous people. Petition starter Randy believes we should not be celebrating the attitudes that inspired genocide and violence. Join Randy in calling on the Journal to stop publishing this yearly editorial. End Thanksgiving Insult to Native Americans 35,856 have signed Randy Kritkausky’s petition. Let’s get to 50,000!

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End Thanksgiving Insult to Native Americans I petition as an enrolled Native American tribal member.  Our people have endured an insulting Thanksgiving message from one of the nation’s major newspapers for too long. For 60 years,The Wall Street Journal has published the same Thanksgiving editorial, titled “The Desolate Wilderness”. The editorial features this passage from a 17th century Pilgrim record concerning what the colonists perceived when they arrived in the New World: “Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wilde beasts and wilde men? and what multitudes of them there were, they then knew not: for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to Heaven) they could have but little solace or content in respect of any outward object; for summer being ended, all things stand in appearance with a weatherbeaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hew. If they looked behind them, there was a mighty ocean which they had passed, and was now as a main bar or gulph to separate them from all the civil parts of the world.” The colonists display a lack of gratitude for the Wampanoag  and for New World bounty that spared them from starvation and death during their first year, a fact that our nation now celebrates as a national holiday, Thanksgiving.  But even more than this disturbing lack of gratitude is a colonial notion that there were no civilized people on these shores. This world view prepared the new nation for centuries of genocidal practices that eliminated 90% of the indigenous population. We petition for the end of the offending editorial in 2021,  a year when news stories about children’s deaths at Indian residential schools has revealed, yet again, the abuse inflicted on indigenous peoples and the legacy of colonial thinking. Referring to North America’s original inhabitants in 2021 as “wilde men” amounts to racist language that is not acceptable in a newspaper claiming to be an international media source. I have previously written to The Wall Street Journal requesting an end to this annual practice. My request has been ignored. Now I ask for other Native Americans and settler descendants to stand together with me calling for The Wall Street Journal to end a racist insult that hangs over our nation’s favorite holiday.  Such an action would be an appropriate commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Thanksgiving in the United States.

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