Thankful for Cultural Intelligence
This year marks the 400th Anniversary of the first Pilgrim Thanksgiving. One group of people who won’t be celebrating is the Wampanoag Nation, who have been long marginalized and misrepresented in the American story.
Children in classrooms around the country have been making crafts – Pilgrim hats, Indian headdresses (which the Wampanoags did not wear), and other symbols of fall. Stories will be told in school about how the Wampanoag shared their harvest feast, which likely did not include turkey, with the starving English settlers, .
The Wampanoags were caring people who lent a hand to the settlers who were, at the time, less fortunate. They were heroes who shared their celebration with the Pilgrims. Yet somehow this has become lost in the version of history many of us learned.
To learn the history of the Wampanoags and their fate after the first Thanksgiving in 1621, a visitor to Plymouth has to drive 30 miles south to Mashpee and visit a modest, clapboard museum. They will meet 71-year-old Mother Bear, a Mashpee Wampanoag who has lived her whole life there. She is the keeper of the Wampanoag’s version of the first Thanksgiving and how the encounter turned into a centuries-long disaster for their Nation.
I read a portion of their history recently in an article by Dana Hedgpeth in The Washington Post on November 4, 2021 which you can find at: https://tinyurl.com/mxnzr78n.
Some of the positive facts I learned:
Their name means People of the First Light in their native language.
They trace their ancestors back at least 10,000 years to southeastern Massachusetts, a land they called Patuxet.
In the 1600s, they lived in 69 villages that included messenger runners who ran to neighboring villages to deliver news.
They hunted deer, elk and bear in the forests, fished for herring and trout, harvested quahogs, and planted corn.
They moved to coastlines in the spring and inland in the winter to escape the harsh weather.
However, there is much more to their history, not all of it pleasant facts. It’s worth reading the article.
In a webinar recently, I heard that cultural intelligence is becoming a critical competency for the next generation of leaders. I would take that one step further and say that it is critical for all citizens to sharpen their awareness of culture—their own and that of others who are different.
In this time of great discontent when disinformation and misinformation is rampant, I’m grateful to our journalists who report the facts and enlighten us about history and other cultures. They help us all develop cultural intelligence. And what better time to start than now as we embark on our winter holiday season filled with traditions of many different cultures?