David J. Silverman - This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving

While Thanksgiving has been enshrined as a celebration of the 1621 alliance between the Plymouth Pilgrims and the Native American Indians, aside from the presence of a group of Wampanoag at the feast marking the colonists’ first harvest, Indigenous peoples are largely absent from the story. In this fresh account, Silverman, professor of history at George Washington University and the award-winning author of Thundersticks, restores the Wampanoags to their central role, and, by tracing Native tribes’ long struggle for self-determination, he exposes the myths of this national holiday and shows why many Native Americans observe the fourth Thursday of November as a National Day of Mourning.