Miami University student reckons with Thanksgiving's complex history

Nov. 23—OXFORD — Chris Bowyer speaks in stops and starts. He often pauses to consider his words. He says he doesn't want to talk too much about land, and he reiterates that he is speaking for no one but himself.

"I want to avoid stereotypes," he says.

Bowyer cannot draw a direct line from his ancestors to the first Thanksgiving story. The one that's evolved into a pleasant tale about Native Americans and European settlers sharing a meal together. In recent years, as America grapples with its complicated history, this version of the story has been described as myth.

"Everything you learned about Thanksgiving is wrong," the New York Times wrote in 2017.

Bowyer is a 31-year-old graduate student at Miami University pursuing a creative writing degree in non-fiction. He thinks about narrative all the time. Good and bad. He thinks about storytelling. And he hesitates before using the word "folklore" to describe Indigenous stories, because it's a word that can sometimes be associated with fantasy.

Bowyer has thoughts about the commercialization of Thanksgiving and glorification of colonization it's turned into, but that is not his story to tell. In an interview with the Journal-News, he misidentifies the Native people directly involved in what became that first Thanksgiving story.

A few minutes later, he corrects himself.

This is his burden when explaining Native American culture to someone unfamiliar with it. Bowyer says he actually enjoys this, but he might take issue with the phrase Native American culture, because it insinuates all Native American people share the same culture.

They don't.

Even citizens of the same Indigenous tribe often grow up in completely different parts of the country. Bowyer is enrolled in the Miami Nation of Indiana. He also is a citizen of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. Bowyer identifies as a Myaamia citizen first, Native American second. There is a difference.

While other Native Miami people were forcibly moved to Kansas and Oklahoma, Bowyer's family never left Indiana. So he is connected to his tribe's homeland in a way others are not. But it is still a place that has been forever changed.

Growing up, Bowyer played football and basketball for his school. He had a PlayStation. In many ways, he lived a typical American childhood.

"It's different having not left," Bowyer says.

But that doesn't mean it was easy.

'You never stop being the person you are'

In Peru, Indiana, Bowyer's discrimination was often seasonal.

Every year, he took trips to Florida with his family. When he came back, his skin was darker. Each fall, he began to look a little less like the rest of his friends at school. In short, he looked less white.

And this meant he got called Pocahontas when he wore moccasins to school. It meant he once played Squanto and Christopher Columbus in the same school play. It meant he's been asked: "So where are your parents from from?"

Bowyer's mom used to call herself "a radical Indian." Now, she says her son is more radical than she ever was. But Bowyer's dad is white, and they have always celebrated Thanksgiving. Bowyer describes Thanksgiving as a holiday about food and football and family and naps.

He associates the holiday with traditional celebrations of crop harvesting. Yes, it means he will likely see someone wearing a headdress and other problematic imagery. He tries to avoid it. He says he doesn't have to watch "Addams Family Values" every year. And he can skip the title sequence in "Parks and Recreation," which shows a stereotypical statue in Indiana meant to depict Native Americans.

"You never stop being the person you are," he said. "It's just that the representation fluctuates."

Growing up, stories about Bowyer's ancestors were not always accessible. His research at Miami University now centers around historical storytelling. It's not just the knowledge of our history that has become so important to him, but how we share that knowledge with the world.

"I always felt a little bit of pride being Native American," Bowyer says. "But a long time ago I didn't know what that meant."

Acceptance, understanding and the Native American contradiction

Guy Jones remembers the fear.

He'd been pulled out of his car. Jones said police in South Dakota were looking for a gun. He was handcuffed, shirt removed and pants pulled down to his knees. The teenager was kneeling on the side of the road when an officer put a shotgun to the back of his head.

He remembers the police officer was shaking.

"As defenseless as I was, he was still scared of me," Jones said.

It's a lesson he carries with him to this day. Jones is a founding member of the Miami Valley Council for Native Americans. He was born and raised in the Standing Rock reservation in South Dakota and has lived in Ohio for decades.

Jones left the reservation when he turned 18. He traveled the country, he said, hoping to understand America's hatred.

In 2002, Jones wrote a book about incorporating Native curriculum into early childhood education, partly because of his experience with his own kids. He said he grew tired of his son coming home and saying he was wrong.

Jones said a teacher asked his son what color a piece of paper was. The color of the sky, his son replied. The teacher was looking for the answer, blue. Then, the teacher asked about a green piece of paper. The color of grass, his son said. That was incorrect, the teacher replied.

When Jones asked the teacher about this, she said those answers were not in the book.

"Well," he remembers saying, "that's your book."

Jones is the father of eight children, so he is used to those conversations. Conversations about accepting differences in everything from discussions about Christopher Columbus to mathematics and the words we choose.

It's a conversation he often has this time of year.

Last week, Jones spoke to employees at the Dayton Art Institute. He said he told them Native people were not warriors, they were intellectuals and medical experts and scientists and engineers. He said Indigenous people initially saved European settlers who came to America starving and dying from disease.

Eventually, he said, those Native Americans were killed and forced from their homes into reservations all across the country.

"It was compassion that contributed to our demise," Jones said. "When you think of it in that manner, there's no reason to think of it as a victim. Spiritually, you should be very proud."