Despite our cultural imperative of gratitude on November 25th, how is grief showing up in your body? Your mind? Your spirit? Sending love to all the multitudes you hold & we’d love to share
An Unlikely Source of Hope:
Yesterday our dear friend Danielle reached out, wondering if we knew of any ways to tangibly be of service this week, as a means of recognizing and approaching healing from historical traumas perpetuated by the benign ‘celebration’ of Thanksgiving as a ‘family and food’ gathering.
Shout them out in the comments below!
Along with your affirmations of solidarity!
We’re here on unceded Haudenosaunee lands, western New York, and whoever you are, wherever you are, let’s use this instrument of empire (welcome to our blog!) to build real relationships and accompany each other in truth-telling as abundant, transformative and resilient as our gardens.
Thank you for asking such profound and important questions, Danielle. We love you so!
And thank *you* for growing with us in all the ways you do ~
Sow Seeds & Sing Songs,
& the whole Fruition crew
ps
Here are a few resources we love for engaging in Thanksgiving with more depth and integrity:
National Day of Mourning (United American Indians of New England)
What are Truthsgiving, Thanks-taking and Takesgiving? Sicagnu Lakota
Unlearning the History of Thanksgiving (Neftali Duran + I-Collective)
Don’t Trash Thanksgiving: Decolonize It (Zenobia Jeffries Warfield)
pps
Share *your* insights & go-to (un)learnings in the comments below!
I just love you all so much.
To add to the list I would share this:
(It was shared with me through Rosemary Gladstar’s newsletter).
https://www.nativehope.org/
I am also not in a position to give buckets of financial support, but there might be opportunies for outreach work with Native Hope?
xoxo
I appreciated Petra’s email this morning “What Are You Grieving As You Give Thanks?” I’m a retired commercial King/Coho Salmon fisherman living in the Tongass National Rain Forest in Southeast Alaska. I’m conscious and appreciative of the impacts of ocean acidification, climate warming, increased erratic storms and ferocity, instantaneous snow melt, increased occurrence of ‘atmospheric river’ rain storms, increased storm force 65+ mph wind storms; food insecurity–several months back Covid affected several Washington State grocery warehouse suppliers so goods normally barged weekly to Petersburg (Mitkof Island) were adversely affected due to warehouse employee shortages–one store for about six weeks; Covid Pandemic in a 50/50 split community…the list goes on. So, the concept of celebrating Thanksgiving when we’re approaching the second year of the Pandemic has affected ‘normal’… . Our community leaders want everyone to shop ‘local’ for the holidays, however, simple replacement items like canning equipment parts, refrigerators, microwave, stoves, washer/dryers have been unavailable in my community for much of the year. I’ve tried to live my life as being part of the solution versus part of the problem. A majority of my ‘friends’ in town have evolved into individuals I no longer recognize due to my/their Covid beliefs/practices. My husband and our year-round greenhouse are my anchors during this moment in time. I have gone through my possessions and greatly reduced my ‘stuff’ through donations to our local Salvation Army–I feel lighter. One commenter spoke of her Armenian heritage–I recall as a child in the Bay Area, ‘eat everything on your plate because the children in Armenia were starving.’–without every detailing the cause of their plight. I grew up in an extremely racially divisive household. My mother’s father was born to a single mother in Texas in the late 1800s. As an unwed mother she was shunned by her family, however, it was the local ‘Indians’ who gave her shelter and food through her and my grandfather’s first several years of life, including during harsh winters. Often and around Thanksgiving I recall my grandfather’s stories about Lee York, his ‘Indian’ friend. Being white in melting pot America warrants a lot of personal research and believing to comprehend who ‘we’ as a people are, where and how one’s relatives emigrated from, their loss of tradition and customs so they could fit in. The Indigenous Peoples were on American soils many moons before any ‘white’ men and subsequently have so many tales of sadness and loss. Thanksgiving should be Indigenous Peoples Day–I would not be here if the ‘Indians’ had not fed and sheltered my white grandfather and his mother.
Hiii thanks for all of these links and reflections, much appreciated!
I just wanted to point out that the Sicagnu Lakota link goes to the general website and offer the link to the named blog post: https://sicangucdc.org/blog/f/what-are-truthsgiving-thanks-taking-and-takesgiving
Thanks again!
Thanks Aaron. We fixed the link. Love you!