Thanksgiving

"I always think it's funny when Indians celebrate Thanksgiving.  (p. 101)"  Junior thinks that it's ironic that Indians celebrate Thanksgiving, and he's right.  Thanksgiving is a celebration of thanks from whites to Indians because the Indians taught the whites how to fertilize, and grow crops in their native land.  On Thanksgiving, people have a feast to celebrate how that the Indians taught the whites to grow food.  This may all seem normal, but the ironic part is that "a few years later, the Pilgrims were shooting Indians (p. 101)."  So, Junior thinks that Indians shouldn't be happy that they helped the whites because they got no thanks from the whites, instead they got thrown off their territory and had to live in reservations of bad land, like where Junior lives now.  Indians only celebrate Thanksgiving because they like to celebrate, and it gives them an excuse to do that.  For Junior, Thanksgiving just reminds him that he's Indian and that Indians were treated unfairly.  This year it also reminds him that his friendship with Rowdy is broken.  "He'd always come over to the house to have a pumpkin-pie eating contest with me.  I missed him (p. 102)."  On Thanksgiving, Junior gives Rowdy a cartoon to try to fix their friendship, but he also gets offended by Rowdy's dad calling his cartoon 'gay'.  Junior is also trying to go to a more privileged white school, but he also gets offended that all the white kids ignore him at first.   Indians celebrate Thanksgiving anyways because they're thankful even when they have nothing to be thankful for.
-Elizabeth