Thanksgiving Reflections on Settler Colonialism

Mt. Hood National Forest, where this photo was taken, is on the ancestral lands of the Molalla, Tenino, Chinookan Clackamas, Kalapuyans people and the Wasco, Paiute, and Warm Springs bands—many of whom called the mountain Wy’East. (Note: The Warm Sp…

Mt. Hood National Forest, where this photo was taken, is on the ancestral lands of the Molalla, Tenino, Chinookan Clackamas, Kalapuyans people and the Wasco, Paiute, and Warm Springs bands—many of whom called the mountain Wy’East. (Note: The Warm Springs Reservation has been experiencing a water outage since 2019, support the confederated tribes through the “The Chúush Fund: Water for Warm Springs”)

This has been a year of pause. For Thanksgiving, we've paused (hopefully!) the large extended family and friends gatherings (it was just us 3 this year). We've paused our regular day-to-day. And we've paused our expectations. 

This pause is an opportunity. It’s a break in this-is-how-we've-always-done-it and opened up space for larger reflection. It has for me at least. This is especially true for reimagining what Thanksgiving is and means to us. So many of us in the United States have created firmly rooted (at least so we thought) traditions that we've previously had difficulty seeing outside of. This year is different. The boxes we've created for ourselves have become more transparent and more malleable and more absorbent. 

I used to be very tied to our family traditions, Thanksgiving in particular. It has always been my favorite holiday. I loved that it wasn't rooted in any one religion, and that almost everyone in America sat down at a table with friends or family each year. I loved that every household creates their own cultural traditions around this day of thanks and eating. I loved that it was about gratitude. I loved that it was a holiday unburdened by gift-giving.

I now realize this is very much a settler-colonizer mindset. A mindset established from never being told the true history of the United States not told through European settler eyes. For Indigenous people, the "holiday" is a painful reminder of the dangerous lie that continues to be told. A lie that completely overlooks the systematic centuries-long genocide that took place to create the country as we know it now. A lie that continues to erase the Indigenous people who live, thrive, and resist today. 

I appreciate this pause to give me the space to move beyond the settler-colonizer mindset. I've spent the last several months doing a deep dive into Indigenous peoples history, Indigenous movements, and settler colonialism in which I--and probably you, too--participate unknowingly to this day. 

I've done a lot of listening and reading of Indigenous voices. This practice has been transformative to say the least. My mindset has shifted over the last few months where I cannot unsee my own complicity in the erasure of Indigenous people.

This active realization on my part, during this season and this holiday that I've always loved, is a great test of how to live with "both/and" thinking. As I noted above, I've always loved how we celebrate Thanksgiving. And I can still love parts of it, but for many reasons, this year shows us that we don't have to be tied to the same story we're told. We don't have to ignore the fact that the "first Thanksgiving" is a myth and that the awful harmonious-feast-between-settlers-and-Indian art projects and pageants reinforce harmful (and racist) lies. We don't have to do things as they always have been done just because that's the way we've done them. We can still be with friends and family and loved ones, but we can do it differently.

So on this day after of supposed "Thanksgiving," I thought I'd share what I've learned and hopefully you--looking at you settler-colonizers--can also do to reflect and shift the way you engage with the world and the land with the perspectives of Indigenous peoples in your mind. Here is what I am doing on this journey as a settler-ally.

1) Reckoning with my complicity as as settler-colonizer

Prior to my deep dive into Indigenous history, I became increasingly uncomfortable with my proclamations of the natural beauty of the place I live, the Pacific Northwest, without Indigenous context. 

I started to realize how little I knew about the Indigenous peoples whose stolen land I was on. I knew, in theory, that the history of the U.S. from the Native American perspective was a violent and bloody one. But because it's not the history we're told growing up in the U.S. nor are we encouraged to seek the truth, I've lived nearly 40 years on stolen land without any thought about what that meant.

Now that the scales have fallen off, it's pretty hard to go back. And a big part of that early portion of the journey is acknowledging settler colonization and my own complicity in it. 

Here's some context on what that means:

"The goal of settler-colonization is the removal and erasure of Indigenous peoples in order to take the land for use by settlers in perpetuity," Amanda Morris writes in Teaching Tolerance. 

"This means that settler colonialism is not just a vicious thing of the past," Laura Hurwitz & Shawn Bourque explain in Unsettling America. "Such as the gold rush, but exists as long as settlers are living on appropriated land and thus exists today." (And to really flesh this out, check out Decolonization is Not a Metaphor by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang). 

I'm finally understanding and reckoning with the settler mindset and to reframe my connection to the land we're on.

2) Revisiting holidays celebrating colonization and genocide

The campaign to toss Columbus day is not new. But until now, most of non-Indigenous America--myself included--has overlooked Thanksgiving as what is actually a celebration of violent colonial history. 

I wrote a bit about that in this Bébé Voyage article, so I won't go into all the details. But this is an opportunity to do it differently. To summarize what I wrote that this year we can

  • Learn about the true history of the United States. An Indigenous People's History of the United States by Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz should be required reading for all non-Native people in the U.S., but if you want a snapshot of the history in an hour-long podcast, listen to thisThis American Life story Little War on the Prairie. And go from there.

  • Acknowledge whose land I'm on in a real and active way -- more about that later.

  • Learn more about foods indigenous to the United States and Native cultures through food. First stop is The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen by Chef Sean Sherman.

  • Support Indigenous organizations and movements -- see more below.

3) Reframing the idea of gratitude

"Having a holiday that only gives thanks one time a year is dangerous. Matika Wilbur reflects in the recent episode of the All My Relations Podcast, "ThanksTaking or ThanksGiving?" 

"Because we [Indigenous people] have ways in our communities of offering thanks and giving thanks on a regular basis that shapes the way that we interact with the world." 

Wilbur, who is Swinomish and Tulalip, gives an example of how her coastal Washington Indigenous community gives thanks every time they are about to embark upon a salmon harvest. 

"When we do this on a regular basis it changes our physical interaction with the water," she says, "I don't ever go to a new place and get in the water without introducing myself, my ancestors and who I am, and ask permission to go into the water.[...] That framework takes away that sense of entitlement."

This consistent and spiritual sense of giving thanks runs so counter to the capitalist upbringing in the United States that settler-colonizers are taught. That is what draws me so much to this approach. This is why Indigenous people are fighting for sovereignty and control over the land that is rightfully there that has been destroyed by capitalism. If we all saw nature from this spiritual place of gratitude, would we be in a different situation environmentally, politically, socially?  

I encourage you to listen to that episode (and all others) of the All My Relations Podcast. But here's a little snapshot from Instagram of the beautiful lesson around gratitude and their discussion with Wampanoag "aunties" about the true history of the Indigenous people depicted in that first Thanksgiving myth.

4) Honoring Indigenous Culture and "Survivance"

Indigenous people are still here. Present tense. 

Despite a genocidal campaign that has extended throughout the entire existence of this nation. Despite the attempts at erasure and eradication of cultures, Indigenous people live and thrive on the lands that were stolen from them. 

So much of the history we were taught was about Native peoples were/are past tense. But Indigenous peoples are not just a part of the past, they are here. And they are fighting for their continued existence.

Anishinaabe scholar and writer, Gerald Vizenor, calls this "survivance." Vizernor defines survivance as "an active sense of presence, the continuance of native stories, not as mere reaction, or a survivable name. Native survivance stories are renunciations of dominance, tragedy, and victimry. Survivance means the right of succession or reversion of an estate, and in that sense, the estate of native survivancy." 

We must recognize this act of survivance through the way we celebrate Indigenous peoples and cultures and honor their stories and experiences as part of the present and future of North America.

5) Acknowledging and honoring Indigenous lands

The very least we can do is to recognize and honor the people whose lands we stole through settler-colonization. It is a small act of grace and a step towards undoing the erasure of Indigenous people. 

This is something I've begun to weave into my everyday life (maybe some of you have noticed). Acknowledgements are included in my bio, my email signature, and in my social media posts. I'm trying to find ways to have conversations with the people around me about recognizing Indigenous land. 

My hope is to create a space of recognition for Indigenous people throughout all of my life and work, but also to open up a conversation about Indigenous lands with settler-colonizers. 

Land acknowledgment by itself is not enough. It is symbolic and empty if it's not followed by action. I hope, though, that it plants a seed among folks who wouldn't otherwise think about it.

To learn about what is a land acknowledgement, how to do it, and what actions to take, check out my recent Bébé Voyage article on the topic.

6) Taking action to support Indigenous peoples and groups

As we should always remind ourselves, reflection without action means nothing. The actions that I've been taking to do my part as a settler-ally, includes the following:

  • Paying "rent"/”tax” to local Indigenous organizations in the form of recurring donations. This is a concept from the Duwamish tribe--the original peoples of what is now known as Seattle--called "Real Rent Duwamish" where they've recently surpassed 10,000 settlers paying their rent due to the tribe. It's not formalized in this way where I live, but I see it as my responsibility living on the land of Indigenous people to make this a part of my monthly dues. 

  • Continuing my research to learn more about the tribes and Indigenous people and cultures from the Pacific Northwest and learn about how I can be involved in their work.

  • Seeking out settler accountability groups. The Duwamish Tribe organizes a variety of accountability groups designed to bring community members into the fight for sovereignty. I'm looking into how, beyond monthly rental payments, I can do this locally. Still a lot of work to do in this area.

  • Supporting Indigenous groups movements such as the Land Back movement, Indigenous food sovereignty, and Indigenous fire management practices. (I have more details about that in the land acknowledgement story--scroll down to the end for the action tips).

  • Buying from Indigenous businesses (more resources in the land acknowledgement story).

These are just my first action steps of a lifetime of action steps to do my part. 

A closing "prayer"

On this day of giving thanks.

On a day that will lead to daily gratitude. 

I honor and extend my gratitude to the original stewards of the land I currently live on. 

To the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Chinook, Molalla, Kalapuya people and the many tribes whose ancestral homeland is along what we now call the Columbia River Gorge. 

The people whose homeland was stolen from them.

The people whose land I live on and play on.

I am grateful they not only saw--and see--the beauty of this amazing place we live in, but also the life within and the life it gives us. 

I am grateful that my mind has been opened and that I can participate, even a little bit, in the healing. 

I am grateful.

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RESOURCES

Here are some great resources to begin your own re-framing of North American history from the perspective of Native peoples.

Podcasts

Books

Elizabeth Doerr