in solidarity with our brothers and sisters and Mother Earth, we join in spirit with the Native Americans, the first people of Turtle Island on the 54th commemoration of a National Day of mourning real-eye-sing Thanksgiving framed as the Wampanoag people welcoming hapless English refugees at Plymouth—a fictive account promulgated two centuries later during the American Civil War—is extremely problematic… during those two centuries, European settlers invaded Native lands, slaughtered Native families, and destroyed resources needed for survival of the Indigenous inhabitants of what became the Colonies, and then the United States of America… once the Civil War ended, Union generals took their battle-hardened troops westward wreaking destruction on Native populations and herding people onto so-called reservations, internment camps…

it’s a bloody and shameful series of chapters in American history that we have not dealt with nor reconciled… so, the question becomes, should we end the Thanksgiving holiday because of the fictitious overlay of pseudo-harmony and subsequent white-washing of history that it conveys? do we replace it, as the United American Indians of New England (UAINE) have done since 1970, with a National Day of Mourning honoring Native ancestors and their struggles to survive today and educate Americans about the actual history of the holiday? can we reframe this American holiday to include Indigenous Peoples, European “settlers” (itself a problematic term), and the continuing waves of immigrants from around the world seeking a better life on these shores?

as the sun shines on truth truth, let us recommit ourselves to building that “more perfect union” and making a future where all people are respected, appreciated, and provided with the tools for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…” we must repair the breach with reparations which are the ultimate way to build power in exploited communities… as we build bridges from the ashes of the racist and genocidal colonial past and present and begin to relate to each other with the understanding we belong to each other, we come into the sacred space of true gratitude for all our relations…

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