'No Reason to Celebrate’: Tribes Mourn on Thanksgiving
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Members of Native American tribes gather to mourn Indigenous peoples around the world, who were victims of prejudice and injustice for centuries.
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Native Americans' supporters pause after a prayer on the 38th National Day of Mourning at Coles Hill in Mass., on Nov. 22, 2007
Native American tribes from around New England will gather in the seaside town where Pilgrims settled.
The tribes will not be there to offer their thanks but to mourn the Indigenous people who suffered from racism and mistreatment.
The observance, dubbed the National Day of Mourning, will take place in Massachusetts to recall the disease and oppression that European settlers brought to North America.
“We Native people have no reason to celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims,” said Kisha James, a member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag and Oglala Lakota tribes and the granddaughter of Wamsutta Frank James, the event’s founder.
“We want to educate people so that they understand the stories we all learned in school about the first Thanksgiving are nothing but lies. Wampanoag and other Indigenous people have certainly not lived happily ever after since the arrival of the Pilgrims,” James said.
“To us, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning, because we remember the millions of our ancestors who were murdered by uninvited European colonists such as the Pilgrims. Today, we and many Indigenous people around the country say, ‘No Thanks, No Giving.’”
This year would mark the 52nd time the United American Indians of New England (UAINE) organizes this event on Thanksgiving Day, since 1970.
Memorial of the colonists' arrival
Indigenous people and their supporters will gather at noon on Cole’s Hill, a windswept mound overlooking Plymouth Rock, a memorial to the colonists’ arrival.
Participants will beat drums, offer prayers and condemn what organizers describe as “the unjust system based on racism, settler colonialism, sexism, homophobia and the profit-driven destruction of the Earth,” before marching through downtown Plymouth’s historical district.
This year, they'll also focus on the terrible legacy of federal boarding schools in the United States and Canada, where hundreds of dead have been uncovered on the sites of former Indigenous children's residential schools.
Earlier this week, Brian Moskwetah Weeden, chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council, stated on Boston Public Radio that Americans owe his tribe a debt of gratitude for helping the Pilgrims survive their first harsh winter.
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Native Americans will hold a National Day of mourning this Thanksgiving.
“People need to understand that you need to be thankful each and every day — that was how our ancestors thought and navigated this world,” Weeden said. “Because we were thankful, we were willing to share ... and we had good intentions and a good heart.”
That wasn’t reciprocated over the long term, Weeden added.
“That’s why, 400 years later, we’re still sitting here fighting for what little bit of land that we still have, and trying to hold the commonwealth and the federal government accountable,” he said.
“Because 400 years later, we don’t have much to show for, or to be thankful for. So I think it’s important for everyone to be thankful for our ancestors who helped the Pilgrims survive, and kind of played an intricate role in the birth of this nation.”
