A Note on the Thanksgiving holiday
Thanksgiving has been celebrated as a harvest festival, on the basis of an exaggerated, fictionalized account designed to diminish the devastating impact colonizers had on Indigenous peoples.
Today, the Mashpee Wampanoag are one of three surviving tribes of the original sixty-nine in the Wampanoag Nation. Here you can read an account of Thanksgiving from a Wampanoag historian. They don't celebrate one harvest festival, but many throughout the seasons, with formal ceremonies to thank the Great Spirit. Their traditions persist: Cranberry Day is a holiday celebrated by the Mashpee people on their remaining ancestral land.
On Thanksgiving day, Indigenous people living in Plymouth commemorate a National Day of Mourning. The United American Indians of New England will livestream this event, and invite all to "join us as we continue to create a true awareness of Native peoples and history. Help shatter the untrue image of the Pilgrims and the unjust system based on racism, settler colonialism, sexism, homophobia and the profit-driven destruction of the Earth that they and other European settlers introduced to these shores.”
It is important we learn the truth, consistently acknowledge Native Peoples of the past and present, debunk stereotypes and myths, and uplift the dynamic, thriving cultures that have shaped and sustained us all.
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