The 400 year anniversary of the Mayflower is not something to be celebrated.

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Dear Jack,


400 years ago today the Mayflower set sail from England and arrived on Wampanoag land in what is now known as Plymouth, Massachusetts. We asked Indigenous Peoples across the Americas what this history of the ‘Mayflower’ means to them. Here are their powerful perspectives on why this is not something to be celebrated 🚫


M, Muscogee (Creek):
“Listen to the voices of the descendants of the people indigenous to this land. Hear our story.”

#MayflowersKill 📢 highlights Indigenous perspectives on the 400 year anniversary of the Mayflower. The Mayflower’s legacy of colonialism and genocide continues to impact Tribal communities around the world through ongoing land theft, violence, and invasion.


Learn more about #MayflowersKill here:
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svlint.org/mayflowerskill and follow the campaign on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (as well as our Instagram story highlight) with #MayflowersKill 📢


Below are stories and testimonials by Indigenous Peoples about what the Mayflower means to them. See these and more by visiting this
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interactive map :



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Wampanoag Tribe of Gayhead Aquinnah:
"My grandfather, Wamsutta Frank James, founded National Day of Mourning, the country's second oldest Thanksgiving protest, in 1970. At the first protest, he and other Native peoples from all over the country buried Plymouth Rock and boarded the Mayflower, replacing the Union Jack flying from its mast with the flag that had flown over liberated Alcatraz island. We continue to observe a National Day of Mourning every Thanksgiving day. This is the history I choose to celebrate - the history of Indigenous resistance!"


Muscogee (Creek):
"Colonization. The Mayflower story continues to be colonized when it is commemorated, celebrated, or told from the white point of view."



Cherokee:
"Lies that have been taught to us since childhood. It was the ship that brought mass murdur and theft of indigenous land."


Aquinnah Wampanoag:
"I am torn. My aunt traces her lineage to the Mayflower. Her husband was a direct descendant of Massasoit."


Dakota/Nakota:
"Invasion of our Indigenous lands and destruction of Indigenous lives."


Mohawk/Abenaki:
"The whole story is covered in lies and propaganda."


Native Hawaiian:
"Westernization, imperialism and colonization."


Aquinnah Wampanoag:
"The history doesn’t matter much to me but our people’s story because of the mayflower landing is what matters."


Choctaw:
"Another entry of violence."


Mayan/Aztec:
"The mayflower represents pain, evil intent, greed, and violence."


Mohawk:
"Betrayal."

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#MayflowersKill

Miwok:
"The Mayflower was one wave of arrivals of colonizers we survived and will continue to. My tribe wasn’t affected by their arrival until the gold rush in the 1800s when the settlers came and instead of “wasting” a bullet on our babies they smashed them against the rocks."


Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe:
"The Mayflower to me means 500 years of destruction, of attempted genocide. What’s one of the first things these settlers did when they stepped off the boat? They robbed Indigenous graves. And they’ve been looting ever since."


Native Hawaiian:
"The arrival of the haole meant the death of the land and the people. The history of the Mayflower is the history of violence and suffering in the name of God."


Delaware:
"The beginning of white supremacy on our continent."


Cherokee Nation:
"A distant, childhood memory of new beginnings, hope, and the exploration of a new world. As an adult I know it means something much different."


Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, Oceti Sakowin (Great Sioux Nation):
"Colonization, an event that perpetuated genocide on Indigenous."


Standing Rock Sioux and Muscogee (Creek):
"A case study in how quickly the persecuted can become the persecutors, how cultural arrogance and religious imperialism can lead to genocide."


Chichimeca /Zapoteca:
"Genocide."


Miakan-Garza Band of the Coahuiltecan People:
"The history of the Mayflower is the representation of colonial violence I was taught to celebrate in public school growing up as a brown person on the borderlands of what is now South Texas and North Mexico."


Nahuatl:
"It means death, colonization and the end of living in peace with the earth."


Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma:
"The beginning of the settler colonial state we live in today. A settler colonial state that erases us, our histories, and cultures in the favor of theirs."


Nansemond:
"The history of the Mayflower landing is a history that has largely been misremembered, and has contributed to a narrative of Indigenous peoples as either passive or hostile."



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#MayflowersKill

Thank you,

Alice
Survival International

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