David J. Silverman: “This Land is Their Land” 2019 presentation in Boston

David J. Silverman (above) presented “This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving” on November 19, 2019 at the Boston Athenæum. Click here for a one-hour video of his talk. The slides below are from the video. Click here for a link to his most recent book.

(Above) Silverman points out that the “new” land where the English separatists landed in 1620 had been occupied for thousands of years. Later he describes the treaty with the Massasoit Osamequin that enabled the English to survive and prosper.

(Above) Silverman reads from portions of Pometacom’s speech in which he lays out the injustices of the English and from the 1836 speech of William Apess who decried their treatment over the previous 200 years.

 

(Above) Silverman contrasts the prevailing myth of Thanksgiving with the speech that Wamsutta (Frank B) James gave at the first National Day of Mourning at Plymouth in 1970.

Click here for an article in the November 25, 2019 New Yorker by Philip Deloria entitled “The Invention of Thanksgiving: Massacres, myths, and the making of the great November holiday” that review’s Silverman’s book, This Land is Their Land.

Click here for another review of Silverman’s book that appeared on November 26, 2019 in Smithsonian Magazine entitled “The Myths of the Thanksgiving Story and the Lasting Damage They Imbue”

Click here for a November 27, 2019 op ed in the New York Times written by Silverman entitled “The Vicious Reality Behind the Thanksgiving Myth”

Click here for a November 27, 2019 article in the Atlantic written by Silverman entitled “In 1621, the Wampanoag Tribe Had Its Own Agenda”