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I have a few friends who mark Thanksgiving as a National Day of Mourning. Yet I also know plenty who observe Thanksgiving as a day of celebrating the harvest, honoring tradition and our ancestors - after the corn was all dried, pumpkins sliced and the wild plumbs brought in, it was a time for giving thanks. When the food was together for the hard winter months and when the work was all done they gathered. After World War I these fall harvest gatherings were held to honor those Native servicemen who came back.

I think it’s important that we teach our kids (all kids, not just Native kids) accurate history, of how the Pilgrims were starving and dying and the first Americans did what they could to help out. And tell them, not all at once, but a tiny bit each year as maturity permits, about the Indian holocaust and land being taken, and still being taken which is why some Native Nations observe a National Day of Mourning. BUT we don’t want to teach history in a way that makes our Native kids feel as though they must carry that burden when all they really want is to be an average kid and fit in.

Our Native community holds a Harvest Festival each November. It’s “our” Thanksgiving and its intertribal with both traditional Native foods and the popular Thanksgiving foods. We don’t so much teach culture, we just enjoy doing our cultural things together, with storytelling, drumming and singing, and Indian humor, it’s different each year but the main thing is we teach our kids the truth without being bitter. Even though we have a sad history (like lots and lots of races of people and cultures) we still find plenty to be thankful for. And most of the Native families we know will gather with their families and eat
Turkey and do the relative thing tomorrow, as well. But we see it all from a whole other standpoint