Decolonizing Thanksgiving

I love Thanksgiving. I love the food, rolls and turkey and mashed potatoes and yams. I love cooking these special foods. I love getting up early for the Turkey Trot. I love the time with family. I love the memories of past meals. I love the traditions we have around Thanksgiving like turning our leftovers in to turkey enchiladas and buying socks at Fred Meyer on Black Friday.

I grew up learning about Thanksgiving as this great moment when the Native people and the White immigrants met together in harmony.  The beginnings of this holiday are much darker, rooted in a massacre of a Pequot community which you can learn about here. So how do we celebrate next Thursday, honoring that fact that Thanksgiving has been a product of colonization and the white supremacy inherent in the American narrative?

Most people of color focus on Thanksgiving as a day of family and a day to be thankful. Following that example is our first step.  Last year some folks who are part of the Ohlone people in California wrote this great guide to decolonizing Thanksgiving. A lot of the specifics are about California, but there are some great tips there.  If you want to support local native people, one way to do so is to support the Chinook Nation as they work to preserve their language and culture.  You can donate here.

So much of the destruction of native peoples and native cultures was done in the name of Christianity. We here in the church in Portland directly benefit from missionaries who came here to the west to colonize and subjugate the native peoples. This Thanksgiving I invite you to remember the catastrophic losses, the tragedies of erased people, and to give thanks for the chance to repent and to seek reconciliation by telling the stories of the peoples who were here since time immemorial and to give thanks by supporting the native people and cultures who continue to thrive.

-Eilidh