With Thanksgiving just a week away, many of us have become fixated on travel plans, turkey, pumpkin pie, friends, family and football. Personally, for the past few days I’ve been thinking only of Ma Fudge’s legendary stuffing — those warm morsels of bread and crunchy walnuts parading across my palette in virtual oral orgy of tastes. Yes my friends, Thanksgiving is the great American holiday, a wonderful celebration shared by people of all races, sexes, religions and cultures.

Except for Indians. Unfortunately, this segment of the American population refuses to celebrate this most festive of autumn feasts. Well, them and Jehovah’s Witnesses, but they don’t celebrate any holidays so I’m not going to count them. Just because the Natives want to be a bunch of sour squaws, they’re missing out on one the finest American traditions.

I’m not saying I don’t understand their animosity toward this holiday. Believe me, I do. I’d be pissed too if a bunch of people pitched camp on my property, shot all my animals, gave me blankets full of smallpox and labeled my race with misguided nomenclature just because they couldn’t read a freakin’ map correctly. And then, as if those annoyances weren’t enough, they proceed to rub it in by celebrating the event for the next couple hundred years.

But are the Indians really going to be Negative Navajos, pouting in their wigwams over something that happened a few centuries ago? Come on guys. Let it go. Black people got past slavery, and now they enjoy amenities like country club access and an education. Japanese people got over the whole internment camp thing during World War II, and now they make millions by producing video games and televisions.

Which is proof, if you just forgive us, good things will happen. Let bygones be bygones and then maybe people will want to travel to your neighborhoods for purposes other than buying tax-free cigarettes and gambling. Perhaps you’ll be able to pass out drunk in a comfortable Tempur-Pedic bed. You could even have some real names, not those queer ones you make up now by combining nouns and adjective with crap you see in nature, like some messed-up MadLib.

But I’m not here to ask for forgiveness. I think we’ve done plenty to extend the olive branch. I mean we put Sacajawea on a golden dollar. And we hate coin money; it’s inconvenient and pokes you when you put it in your wallet. But we did it anyway to make them feel better. If that’s not enough, I don’t know what is.

What I am here to do though is convince our indigenous brothers to bury the tomahawk and join us in celebrating this national holiday. They’re just as American as the rest of us, and we’d be honored to invite them to the table, just like we did at the first Thanksgiving years ago. Except this time, we won’t take all their land, slaughter their men and steal their farming methods. We won’t even stick ’em at the little kids’ table. I promise — honest Injun.

I think to accomplish this we have to dispel one of the biggest hang-ups that Jim and Jane Bowbender have about Thanksgiving: That it’s a celebration of the Indians’ demise. That’s not the case at all. Sure, sometimes Nana does use the Grace to thank the Good Lord that He smote the heathens all those years ago to make way for “God’s people.” But I think she just does that to preserve the archaic tradition of the holiday.

Trust me, for most Americans, the origins of the holiday don’t mean a whole helluva lot. Thanksgiving isn’t about surviving hardships, conquering the New World, being thankful for our blessings or any of that crap.

In reality, Thanksgiving means devouring as much food as we can cram in our fat mouths, having little cousins around to fetch us beer, watching football and then scrounging around the attic the following day to get down the damn Christmas decorations.

Or it might be that Natives have a problem with Thanksgiving food. They do eat corn, sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce pretty much every day. So why would they get excited to consume it on Thanksgiving?

I have a reason — gravy. Sweet, glorious gravy. And Thanksgiving is the one day of the year when it’s acceptable to drown everything you eat, from turkey to toast, in the lovely liquid. If you can’t get excited about that, well then, I guess you shouldn’t be celebrating Thanksgiving after all.

Native Americans, please, reconsider your position on Thanksgiving. I can tell you want to be part of this holiday, and we want you involved. I look at your proud and noble people, and you give me hope. Hope of unity. Hope for a perfect Thanksgiving. And don’t you dare think of taking that hope away. Nobody likes an Indian giver.

Brian Fudge, a senior in the College of Communication, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at [email protected].