A New Thanksgiving Movie

For the last two years, BrainPOP has been reviewing and assessing all of our content relating to Native history and culture. Today, we are thrilled to announce the first in a series of new and updated topics that has emerged from this process: Thanksgiving on both BrainPOP and BrainPOP Jr.  Incorporating recent scholarly discoveries as well as Native perspectives, our new Thanksgiving topic brings you the messy, fascinating, and sometimes painful roots of the classic American holiday. 

The topic was developed in collaboration with Mashpee Wampanoag tribal member and historian Paula Peters and her team. They helped us get the facts right, and carefully reviewed our visual designs to ensure that both our telling of the story, and our representation of the Wampanoag historical figures, were accurate and respectful. 

For generations, the story of Thanksgiving has been taught through the lens of the experience of the settlers at Plymouth, excluding or eliding the perspective of the Wampanoag. The holiday came to be shaped by the myths that grew from that incomplete telling of history. And over time, those myths deeply influenced the way we understand our country’s origins. But recent decades have brought a growing awareness of the narrowness of that scope. And reams of new research from cadres of dedicated scholars—historians, archaeologists, geneticists, and more—have consistently returned Native people to where they always belonged: at the center of the story.

We are happy to share that story. Enjoy our new topic, and let us know what you think in the comments!