Just ahead of Thanksgiving and following the release of his book examining how Indigenous people shaped Mexico politics during the 20th century, Alan Shane Dillingham, Ph.D., assistant professor of Latin American history at Albright College, published an article in the Washington Post, titled “The violence at the root of our Thanksgiving myth has been hemispheric.”
“As we reflect on Thanksgiving and the history of conquest and violence against Indigenous people of the Americas, we would do well to listen to Native voices,” writes Dillingham. “Mexico, like the United States, has begun a renewed conversation regarding institutions and economies built on colonial violence. Reckoning with this past is a way to imagine a better future.”
A citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Dillingham spent high school studying Spanish in Mexico, in the aftermath of an Indigenous uprising led by the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional. His research focuses on the historical experiences of Native peoples of the Americas.
