By Chief Lay
It’s thankstaking day again. What should we, the colonized people living in settler-colonial countries, be so thankful for? On this day, the Black Hammer Organization and Colonized people all around the world say ‘No thanks to Genocide! No thanks to yt power! No thanks to our people’s oppression!’
At the same time, we say, ‘Yes, to materially helping our people! Yes, to building Hammer City! Yes, to the unity and liberation of all Indigenous and Colonized people!’
Origins of thankstaking
This settler celebration is rooted in the only tradition yt power knows—the looting, pillaging, and spreading of disease to indigenous and colonized people. It was on this day the Wampanoag people, who lived in the east of so-called Rhode Island and Massachusetts, faced these barbarians.
The Wampanoag people have a traditional feast known as the Nikkomosachmiawene (Grand Sachem’s Council Feast). As soon as the europeans arrived they looted this nation’s sacred gravesites and winter supplies. To disarm and retaliate against the colonizers, the Wampanoag peoples liberated crucial tools from their attackers.
A leader of the Wabanaki peoples, Samoset, who was imprisoned in england not long before, came to start a dialogue. His aim was to educate the savage colonizers of the many nations and tribes of the land. Samoset brought other leaders of the Wampanoag nation after they arranged the return of the liberated tools. Two of them were Massasoit and Tisquantam.
The colonizers took advantage of this dialogue with the Indigenous leaders and schemed an alliance with one of them, Massasoit. This scheme ensured that only unarmed Indigenous people could work with these wealthy, urban colonizers who couldn’t farm, hunt, or fish by themselves, and that those who did harm against the colonizers were punished.
This relationship quickly led to the imprisonment and enslavement of the Patuxet leader, Tisquantum, in Spain. Fortunately, he escaped this enslavement, but later he found that his tribe had been wiped out through biological warfare, by colonial-viruses like measles, smallpox, and typhus.
The europeans expected submission from the surviving native peoples and demanded their knowledge of the land so they could occupy it.
The first actual thankstaking that europeans participated in was a slaughter of 600 Pequot people, followed by the cultural slaughter of forcing the survivors to accept Christianity. The wholesale genocide of Indigenous people by virus and violence prompted a new resistance to the europeans.
Metacomet (King Phillip), the descendent of Massasoit, had experienced the deception, looting, and destruction of his Indigenous siblings and their cultures by the europeans. The europeans expected that Metacomet would be a willing servant to colonialism and was crowned to be King of the Wampanoag peoples. Metacomet then ensured that his people were to liberate the land, resources, and themselves.
Metacomet began to train an army of confederated native peoples to get their land back, and overturn european rule. He regrouped after the colonizers learned of the freedom fighters and forced him to sign a treaty of submission. The masses of native people, armed with the political objective and the true history of europeans, led raids on european settlements to weaken them.
The europeans forced subjugated Indigenous populations to fight on behalf of colonialism, and eventually beat back the resistance of Metacomet and the Wabanaki confederacy, relegating the fighters to concentration camps and executing Metacomet.
Cultural Colonization
Thankstaking has been exported as colonizer culture to colonies all around the world. This symptom of colonialism extended its reach using global markets. It became almost inescapable once the u.s. became a worldwide military power, with bases infecting and killing the indigenous lands, peoples, and cultures with the disease of white nationalism.
The holiday is officially celebrated in 9 nations, the united snakes, klanada, australia, the netherlands, Brazil, Grenada, Liberia, and Saint Lucia. It is unofficially celebrated in the Philippines. It’s no coincidence that colonialism is an occupying force in all of these nations.
The colonial nations of amerikkka and klanada are obvious celebrators. Their settlers are thankful for the genocide and plunder of the nations of Turtle Island. They revel in the plundering, not only in their feast, but also in their massive waste of resources. Colonizers regularly throw out 200 million pounds of turkey meat after the holiday, while colonized people slip into landlessness, poverty, and hunger. Immediately after the holiday comes the colonial-capitalist day of Black Friday, where poor and working colonized people are expected to spend all of their money on products covered in our blood.
The netherlands are proud of the divide-and-conquer strategies of their pilgrims who went to colonize Turtle Island. Colonizers left the island, not because of religious persecution, but because they wanted to speed up the colonial looting of Indigenous Nations.
Grenada adopted thankstaking after the u.s. president, ronald reagan, sent invading forces to Grenada to destroy the anti-colonial New Jewel Movement in 1983. The holiday acts as a cultural flag of victory for the colonizers.
The Philippines were forced into the holiday when they were colonized by the united snakes in 1898. President Marcos, a sellout leader held up by reagan to be an anti-communist freedom fighter, also made sure to celebrate thankstaking on the day he declared martial law upon the colonized poor and working masses of the Philippines.
What to do now?
White power rests on the backs of the colonized poor and working-class people, and their stolen land, labor, and resources. Armed with the political education of our true history, we can see clearly, like Metacomet did, that the european colonizer is not one to negotiate with under any circumstances.
The fight for liberation for the masses of poor and toiling colonized people has never stopped and will never stop. We will continue to rise up and force white power’s end.
We have learned from our ancestors that we must keep anti-colonial resistance in every action that we do.
Black Hammer Organization has created a culture of political education so that we may touch the minds of our people and free them from the mental and cultural shackles we were forced into under the miseducation system.
We also don’t teach colonizers for free. In exchange for reparations, we create traitors to white power with our Class for Colonizers. Colonizers who want to be on the right side of history can pay reparations and betray the white power system.
We also have a security and defense apparatus that provides free healthcare to any and all colonized people who want liberation from the colonial healthcare industry. This ensures that we can strengthen ourselves holistically so that we can rely on each other and work with collective leadership to solve our problems and get free!
We meet the masses where they are, in their neighborhoods, to give them protection from the coronavirus pandemic ravaging our communities. Going into the hood and providing for the masses is what inspires the colonized poor and working people to take themselves out of this system and take back what is rightfully ours!
Our strength as Colonized people is in our unity, and only through that unity will we smash colonialism and all of its offspring, and give birth to a new world. A world where all Colonized and Indigenous people have dictatorship over their land, labor, lives, and resources!
Join Black Hammer and take the Hammer of liberation into your hands!
Land Back!
