Thanksgiving why not celebrate

So we do have our traditions for Thanksgiving , but I am not sure that they would be considered celebrating the holiday. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Maybe we celebrate, after all that has happened to our Native people, that we are still here.

We still have our songs and dances, our ceremonies that make us who we are. Naples, Florida: My perspective has changed over the years. These children are woke. Carnegie, Oklahoma: Every day is Thanksgiving Day for me, but especially in Vietnam in and when I got home in Wisconsin Dells: My family is full of gratitude for all our Heavenly Father blesses us with.

I remember when I was a young girl traveling to be together with all the relatives. Deer hunting was a huge family event, and the meal was prepared with prayers and love. I learned the history of Thanksgiving. I acknowledge the negative events surrounding that time in history. However, Thanksgiving continues to be a time of family, prayers, and love. We must move forward. We continue to teach the entire story of our Indigenous people of this continent.

Speak truth. The day and all days are about togetherness and heartfelt gratitude for all that our Heavenly Father blesses us with: spirituality, health, love, and compassion. Webster, Massachusetts: The fall harvest feast, which we call harvest moon feast, is something our Eastern tribes have done since the beginning of time. Getting together and giving thanks for the harvest, family, and friends is certainly something all should enjoy.

The Thanksgiving narrative, however, is problematic on many fronts and can be justifiably referred to as a day of mourning. Pine Ridge, South Dakota: We celebrate having a family feast. Gulfport, Mississippi: If you look at the true reason for Thanksgiving, it was the Natives' having their harvest ceremony and then sharing with the Pilgrims. The Pilgrims were having a feast, so there were traditional European foods there. That is, till the Natives pitied them and brought the foods only found on this continent that we all now associate with Thanksgiving.

Why should we give up what is ours because someone else tries to paint a different image on it. We just keep the meaning as it originally was and journey on. We have a feast for the people and feed all who show up. Then we may have a traditional dance in the evening. One of our elders will pray for the food and our people. For my family, if we are not traveling to the in-laws in Arizona, we spend time with who is around, my brother or sister, and have dinner and eat together and share and spend time with each other as a family.

But we would welcome any Pilgrims, non-Natives, undocumented aliens, etc. We pray and give thanks for all that we have received, and watch football and basketball or do something outside, weather permitting. We pray and be thankful for all the Creator has provided. Chicago, Illinois: Absolutely not. The original thanksgiving holidays were celebratory feasts after eradicating or relocating tribes from the East Coast.

I do not celebrate genocide with a feast. It has nothing to do with a harvest festival. Wellington, Kansas: Thanksgiving was a blending of two different cultures, one culture helping another to survive.

The historical knowledge we have now of what was actually taking place may not be the same as what was being experienced in those days. Our assessment now may not be fair because of all that the Native people have endured. Exeter, California: Being the only Native American classroom teacher at a public school, raised mostly in an urban setting steeped heavy in traditional American holidays, and around many other native people on weekends while traveling to dance, this has always been a challenging question for me that I cannot claim to know the answer for.

I see many other teachers I work with who are not native struggle with knowing how to address the issue comfortably. I have to say, I have fear that if we avoid the issue altogether, Native people will be forgotten about. I have seen some teachers decide to stop teaching about Native Americans for fear of offending. I personally get sad when I see that happen.

I know Thanksgiving is a controversial subject, and there are so many viewpoints. I share the modern theme of Thanksgiving, which I think has good intentions—family and community.

I have also chosen to teach about Native American culture, even more heavily in November because of Thanksgiving, even though it is no longer a part of the curriculum. I have found ways to integrate it while teaching something that I think is important.

I do an assembly for the students in which we dance, and I emphasize how it is not possible to teach everything there is to know about Native Americans in just one assembly. I emphasize the diversity among native people. Sevierville, Tennessee: Regardless of all the political views of Thanksgiving, we can all find something to be thankful for!

San Antonio, Texas: Except for the last four years, the twenty years before that I spent 95 percent of my Thanksgivings at the table of my brother-in-law. Our gatherings were about giving thanks for what we had.

As for Native American history being left out of teaching, it is an outrage. Educate our fellow educators on how to teach it. It would be a great way to help others teach courses and show how to respect the culture. Edmonton, Alberta: We have family members with addiction issues. The kids get to eat, which my mom loves. And we can make the day about what everybody wants to talk and think about anyway: the food. People may not realize it, but what every person in this country shares, and the very history of this nation , has been in front of us the whole time.

Most of our Thanksgiving recipes are made with indigenous foods: turkey, corn, beans, pumpkins, maple, wild rice and the like. We should embrace this. For years, especially as the head of a company that focuses on indigenous foods, I have explored Native foods. It has given me—and can give all of us—a deeper understanding of the land we stand on.

We Americans spend hours outdoors collecting foods like chanterelles, morels, ramps, wild ginger, chokecherries, wild plums, crab apples , cactus fruit, paw paws, manzanita berries, cattails, maple, wild rice not the black stuff from California, which is a modified and completely different version of the true wild rice growing around the Great Lakes region , cedar, rose-hips, hickory, acorns and walnuts.

We can work with Native growers producing heirloom beans, squash and pumpkins , and Native corn varieties, all coming in many shapes, sizes and colors. We can have our feasts include dishes like cedar-braised rabbit, sunchokes with sumac, pine-stewed venison, smoked turkey with chestnuts, true wild rice with foraged mushrooms, native squash with maple, smoked salmon and wild teas. No matter where you are in North America, you are on indigenous land. There is no need to make Thanksgiving about a false past.

It is so much better when it celebrates the beauty of the present. The original version of this story misstated the year in which the Pequot Massacre occurred. It was , not Contact us at letters time. By Sean Sherman. Share tweet. Next: Dec. Related Posts. Intro of Critical Animal Studies.