Happy Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Day
EDUCATE YOURSELF
- The US is home to more than 600 Indigenous Nations, Tribes and Bands.
- Find out what peoples are Indigenous to your area and read up on the oral or written history as shared by them, to get the full picture or where you live.
- The Native peoples are the traditional stewards of these lands and there is an enduring relationship that exists between Indigenous Peoples and their traditional territories.
ACKNOWLEDGE THE FOLLOWING
- The entire country rests on stolen land. After colonialists settled, an estimated 90% of the native populations died, estimated at as high as 80 million people.
- It is important to understand the longstanding history that has brought each of us to reside on this land, and to seek to understand our place within that history.
- Land acknowledgement exists neither solely in the past tense, nor in an ahistorical context: as colonialism and its effects are a current ongoing process, and we need to build our mindfulness of our present participation.
RECLAIM NATIVE TRUTHS
- Identify and challenge harmful ideas about Native Peoples. It is important to know that for many Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a reminder of the genocide of millions, a day of mourning and protest since it commemorates the arrival of settlers in North America and the centuries of oppression, that followed.
- Indigenous people are working to heal their traumas, learn their languages, and support their nations. Let’s reflect on this and seek to understand land displacement and how that plays into our daily lives, and what actions can we take to support Indigenous communities.
THANKSGIVING IS ALREADY A WAY OF LIFE FOR NATIVE PEOPLES
- Giving thanks and emphasizing gratitude for all of creation is central to Native cultures. In this way, Thanksgiving is simply a chance to appreciate the good things of life like family, community, and the riches of the land.
- While some Native Americans have chosen to reject the Thanksgiving holiday entirely, many embrace the positive messages of the holiday and choose to put aside thoughts about the complex history of this day.
INDIGENOUS PEOPLE OF THE CONTINENT
- Our respect and recognition for the Native Peoples of the territorial US should extend to all Indigenous Pueblos of the Continent. Acknowledgment should also include all the native descendants and de-tribalized diaspora alike, of the Maiz- or Corn-based cultures of the greater Mesoamerican region.
- Many of us are Native American too, even those from mixed-Indigenous heritage. The reality is that people from Latin America come from a variety of racial and cultural backgrounds, and too often these racial and ethnic markers make invisible or opaque Native American and mixed-Indigenous peoples. Albeit we are a fusion of many cultures, languages, and religions, many of us consciously preserve our Indigenous ethnicities, traditions, and roots, simultaneously.
- Migrants and refugees like many of our parents, grand- or great-grand parents fled political and/or economic violence. Labels like Hispanic, Latino/a/x, Immigrant, etc. are terms birthed in the US context, and "Hispanics/Latinos/Immigrants", who ourselves displaced of land, have found ourselves as settlers in the homelands and nations of other Indigenous peoples. The Indigenous Pueblos of the Continent continue to flee the colonial structures in their countries of origin, only to face the coloniality and racial domination of the United States, encountering structures here that seek to manage and erase our indigeneity.
JOIN US IN REMEMBRANCE
- On these two holidays, Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Day, LEAD Projects is asking all of us to reflect on our collective history and to celebrate the beauty, strength, and resilience of the Native Peoples. May we all be filled with hope, healing, and a desire to dismantle those barriers that divide and conquer us.
- These holidays also give an opportunity for native, diaporic, de-tribalized, and mixed-Indigenous people from all the Americas to learn about, and from, the Indigenous groups in US settings. All people have a right to learn about their past and present, so as to define their future.
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