43 pages • 1 hour read
Larissa FasthorseThe Thanksgiving Play
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaThemes
Performative Wokeness and White Privilege/Guilt
Content Warning: This section discusses anti-Indigenous racism and the genocide of Indigenous Americans.
Although the word “woke” doesn’t appear in the text, this is undoubtedly a play about misguided “wokeness.” In the original African American Vernacular usage, “woke” simply means politically and culturally aware with no added sense of irony. However, as the characters in the play demonstrate, white-centered activism that is performed on behalf of an absent oppressed population is often ego-driven virtue signaling or, at its most sincere, a manifestation of white guilt. “White guilt” refers to the largely unproductive feelings of shame that many white people develop upon learning about systemic racism and how they as white people have benefitted from the oppression of BIPOC. In the play, Logan and Jaxton in particular embody white guilt, agonizing over how to perform cultural sensitivity “correctly” and fearing the backlash that could result from missteps. While acknowledging white privilege and feeling white guilt might seem like a good first step toward activism, the play suggests that they create a foundation that centers on easing white feelings.
More than that, Fasthorse’s characters leverage wokeness for social clout, effectively appropriating Indigenous oppression for their own gain. Logan and Jaxton, for example, relish their white guilt for the supposed credibility it gives them in taking the lead on devising. In fact, each of the four characters has a personal ulterior motive for taking part in the Thanksgiving play project, whether it’s a paying job (Alicia), career damage control (Logan), a chance to fulfill lifelong dreams (Caden), or to feel important and bolster credibility as an actor/activist (Jaxton). Even if Alicia were in fact Indigenous, their devised performance would have been a disaster. Logan and Jaxton believe they are empowering Alicia by coaxing her to perform her supposed culture, but they are really coopting her (supposedly) Indigenous voice to lend their play authenticity, from which they will certainly reap the benefits. When they try to forge ahead despite Alicia’s whiteness, they attempt to turn the lack of Indigenous voices into a creative choice.
As misguided as the characters are, the play also calls out the larger systemic issues that make it impossible for this group to devise a truly culturally sensitive and inclusive piece. For instance, Logan should not have received a grant for National Native American Heritage Month Awareness Through Art. The fact that the grant contract has no stipulation requiring the participation of Indigenous people suggests that the agency is also performing wokeness and activism. Logan admits that no Indigenous people auditioned, and neither Logan nor Jaxton know any Indigenous Americans. This implies that the separation between white and Indigenous communities is vast and that no legwork has been done to bridge the gap. In the end, the characters decide that they are doing something significant by doing nothing, which sums up how performative wokeness functions in those who are doing conspicuous and self-centered activism.
Historical Accuracy and Cultural Memory
Logan asks Caden to join the project as a consultant for the sake of historical accuracy, feeling that this offers her a layer of protection against criticism: Surely, if they are only performing “true” narratives, no one can object and call their play offensive. However, just because something is historically accurate, that doesn’t make it innocent or appropriate for children, as Caden’s research demonstrates. European colonizers murdered about 56 million Indigenous people and then forced the rest into segregation on reservations, typically with limited services and resources. Even without bloody severed heads, there is no kernel of pleasantness within this historical truth that can be coaxed out and made appropriate for children.
Consequently, the characters end up replicating the very sanitization of history that they purportedly want to avoid. Logan ignores Caden as soon as his historical facts aren’t helpful in creating what she envisions. These efforts reach a comical level when Jaxton tries to physically cover his face to stop him from speaking. However, once the idea of historical accuracy has been invited into the room, it’s impossible to suppress. Logan tries desperately to find the traditionally accepted and celebrated meal narrative in Caden’s history. Nevertheless, while Caden’s version of historical accuracy is certainly a narrative that centers white perspectives, any historically accurate narrative involves genocide. Indigenous people are too entwined in the Pilgrim narrative to remove, which means that the characters can’t omit Indigenous Americans from their play without erasing them. It can’t be done without fabrication, which perhaps explains the decades of historically inaccurate Thanksgiving plays.
Fasthorse spotlights several such plays in the odd-numbered scenes to further problematize the idea of historical accuracy. These represent popular constructions of Thanksgiving in cultural memory and the national imaginary; Indigenous people are typically absent in the creation and played onstage by white children in redface. The plays are racist and full of stereotypes, presenting Indigenous people as existing merely to give to the Pilgrims or as simply stupid and violent. However, these stereotypes are treated as untouchable elements of long-standing traditions, and they represent the indoctrination of young children into the Thanksgiving mythology. These are part of the curriculum, which reifies them as supposed truth. That they are, in their own way, “history” implies that the entire premise of creating a historically accurate Thanksgiving play is misguided. Action in the present rather than romanticization of the past is the way forward, Fasthorse implies.
Stereotypes and Constructions of Indigeneity
Alicia is not Indigenous. She thinks that she might be a little bit Spanish, which could refer to Spanish-speaking Indigenous people in the Americas but also to Spanish Europeans, and she certainly has no connection to any sort of Indigenous culture. However, her sense that she might have some claim to Indigenousness because of her ancestry, coupled with the “ambiguous” looks that have allowed her to play people of various ethnicities, speaks to a broader societal confusion around what exactly it means to be Indigenous.
Historically, the American legal system had trouble pinpointing Nativeness, particularly after centuries of intermixing and sexual violence, so they settled on a collection of stereotypical physical traits. In the 21st century, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a government agency, maintains tribal records, registration, and membership for the sake of preservation and certain types of government assistance. The membership system also makes it more difficult to falsely claim to be Indigenous American. This is necessary because Indigeneity doesn’t have a specific look, attitude, or set of values. However, The Thanksgiving Play suggests that in the popular imagination, Indigenous identity remains largely a matter of stereotypes and other white supremacist preconceptions. For example, Alicia capitalizes on her vaguely “ethnic” appearance by using headshots that tacitly align her with different cultures. To Alicia, looking Indigenous means wearing a lot of turquoise jewelry. She also mentions the one-drop rule, which bases ethnic and racial identity on blood quantum and is a highly outdated metric from the eras of slavery and Jim Crow segregation.
Since there are no Indigenous people in the play, there are technically no examples of Indigenous stereotypes. However, the characters have clearly internalized these beliefs. It’s easy to write off Alicia’s equating turquoise with Nativeness as a product of her disinterest in critical thinking, but Logan, who overthinks, also accepted that stereotype. Before her whiteness is revealed, Jaxton speaks reverently to Alicia, stating, “I have always been drawn to your ways” (17). He himself is a stereotypical “yoga dude,” which involves appropriating other cultures with only a surface-level understanding of them. Jaxton buys into the “noble savage” trope, which he exposes again when he claims to Logan that he knew that Alicia wasn’t Indigenous because she wasn’t “centered enough.” Later, Logan is so impressed with Alicia’s Zen-like ability to be content that she asks if Alicia is certain that she isn’t Indigenous. None of them knows any Indigenous people, although Jaxton does know a white guy who built a sweat lodge.
