July 27th, 2014 Last Updated on: July 27th, 2014
jjwainwright/Flickr Creative Commons
Miami pub crawl organizing group Keep Crawling is runing a Thanksgiving Costume Pub Crawl. Dressing in costume isn't required, but participants are encouraged to come as either a Pilgrim or Native American.
While most of the jokes one could make about dressing as a Pilgrim might include cracks about looking dowdy, dressing as a Native American is tremendously more problematic. It's also offensive.
To say Thanksgiving is a touchy time to mockingly dress up like a Native is an understatement. Conventional American lore states that Thanksgiving is a time to celebrate the Pilgrims surviving their first winter in America with help from the Wampanoag tribe. However, this narrative is more of a tall tale that romanticizes the harsh effects of colonization, and overlooks the mistreatment of Natives that followed: shady political treaties, forced and often violent removal of tribes from their lands, and the spread of misinformation about “savages.”
Read more on the issue at Miami New Times.
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We would never dress in a yarmulke a turban or a crown of thorns to make a fashion statement. This would bring shame upon our people, We have been taught since infancy to respect other cultures and religions. Maybe if you took pride in your own culture and teach your children the respect of your own religion, hurting others wont be such an ignorant pleasure. Saying you don’t understand the significance of our sacred attire doesn’t make it ok to mock it. It is not our fault that you were raised with this lack of identity, dignity, and respect for who you are and who your children will be.
I think I’ll get a pub c raw and invite everyone to dress like Italian Mafiosa…or Grape stompers…I t h ink that would be a real hoot…Christiane, can you give us some pointers?
This photograph is truly insulting and bad taste.
Christiane…that whole rant and it’s not even RUINING, it should be running.
Your “beginning to tire of Native Americans whining”?! We’re tired of ignorant, careless, opinionated individuals such as yourself. I guess your mother never taught you the old “If you have nothing nice to say..” expression, or your just too stupid and cold-hearted. It would not be acceptable for anyone to “dress up” as an African American, an East Indian, an Asian or even a Caucasian for that matter, so it should not be acceptable to “dress” as a Native. We do not close your ears, YOU DO.
Dear Christiane Bagnato,
I hope I’m using these word’s correctly, fuck you.
God bless♡
Your response is funny! Sums it up!
Why doesn’t anyone online check their work? How are they “runing” anything when runing isn’t the word that should be there? Do you even know what a “rune” is? Anything “Runic” in nature can be something from an alphabet to a stone! Look it up! The word you should have used was RUINING! Stop relying on Spell Check or the other online spelling aids! Anything that is a word will be overlooked and assumed to have been used correctly! Besides everything else I’m beginning to tire of Native Americans whining about others dressing as one. It’s boring already and doesn’t really speak to the core issues! If you prefer to close the ears of a nation by continuously whining about the insult of donning ancestral “costumes” because we don’t understand their meaning, by the time you get to the real deal…no one will be listening.
I think the word you meant to correct to is RUNNING! You should have checked your response before you sent it.
I’m pretty sure running is actually the word they were looking for. It makes a lot more sense in the context of the sentence. If people were actually “donning ancestral costumes” as you refer to them, it would be a huge step up from the stereotypical caricatures likely to appear at such an event.