We Cannot Veganize Genocide

Thanksgiving. It’s an American tradition – perhaps the American tradition. It encompasses our shared history as a nation and compels us to be grateful for, well, everything. For many it represents the utmost in family togetherness, seasonal abundance of food and drink, and of course the start of the holiday shopping season. After all, is there anything more American than the revving of the nation’s economic engine? 

This is what Thanksgiving has come to signify in the past 160 years since Abraham Lincoln released his official Proclamation of Thanksgiving which was (contrary to popular belief) not an acknowledgement of the generosity of Indigenous peoples to European settlers, but a plea of gratitude for the blessings of the divine patriarch in a nation ravaged by civil war. (Click the link to read it yourself).

What is the real history of Thanksgiving? The truth is that the European settlers commemorated the killing of entire Indigenous villages in celebrations they called “Thanksgiving.” This is why Indigenous and Native Peoples call Thanksgiving a “national day of mourning.” The United American Indians of New England, a Native-led organization focused on Indigenous struggles in the Americas, started the National Day of Mourning event in 1970 in place of Thanksgiving, and holds the following: 

“Thanksgiving day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native people, the theft of Native lands, and the relentless assault on Native culture. Participants in National Day of Mourning honor Native ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples to survive today. It is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection as well as a protest of the racism and oppression which Native Americans continue to experience.”

Which brings us to the question: should vegans celebrate Thanksgiving? Is it enough to substitute a plant-based meal on Thanksgiving to consider it morally acceptable? 

This may be an unpopular opinion – especially with all the vegan Thanksgiving options and vegan influencers and food bloggers touting hundreds (thousands?) of animal-free main courses, sides, and desserts to vegans and the veg-curious alike – but Thanksgiving is highly problematic for numerous reasons, and those reasons cannot be compensated for merely by replacing the turkey at your table with a plant-based holiday roast. 

Yes, Thanksgiving is a hyper capitalistic tradition predicated upon the commodification of hundreds of millions of nonhuman animals, each of which suffered tremendously to become the dismembered point of focus at the family holiday table. But Thanksgiving is also a white supremacist colonial (and specifically Pilgrim) mythology which erases the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Native and Indigenous peoples, perpetuated to justify the settler colonial project known as The United States of America. Partaking in Thanksgiving festivities – even if 100% vegan – normalizes the idea that recognizing the suffering of Native and Indigenous people is optional and amoral. We know in our hearts that this is untrue. 

If we are serious about compassion for all beings, if our anti-racism is not performative, then we must incorporate this knowledge into our understanding of this “holiday.” Whether you continue to observe Thanksgiving or not, we as activists and allies of nonhumans must understand that you cannot veganize genocide. You cannot have a plant-based ethnic cleansing celebration and consider it to be a cruelty-free exercise in annual gratitude. To do so is to reinforce the speciesist system and hierarchy that we as animal liberation activists work each and every day to dismantle: the idea that violence against certain “lesser” beings and bodies is justified, and that it is worthy not of condemnation but of celebration. 

If we are going to oppose – and effectively undo – the exploitation and domination of nonhuman animals, then we must oppose it in every form when it is done against anyone, especially populations such as the Native and Indigenous peoples of North America who were nearly wiped out by settler colonial violence and endure centuries of racist oppression on the land of which they are the original stewards. 

Nonhuman animals deserve better. Native and Indigenous people deserve better. Much, much better. 

If nothing else, consider this: the word ‘compassion’ derives from the Latin prefix ‘com’ (meaning with) and ‘passion’ (meaning suffering). To be ‘compassionate,’ therefore, is to be with the suffering of others. 

Not to deny it. Not to minimize it. And certainly not to rationalize it. 

So ask yourself this Thanksgiving: whose suffering am I with?