Rethinking Thanksgiving, Part 2—Taking Action
This post is part of a series exploring ways to decolonize Thanksgiving. Read Part 1 of this series here.
When I learned about the painful history of Thanksgiving I realized I could no longer celebrate it.
After getting more informed about the true history of the holiday, I decided we had to make changes in the ways we celebrate the holidays. I shared what I had learned with my family and asked them what we should do.
I was surprised to learn my kids were mostly invested in the food. Holiday food means a lot to my family as it represents good times with my mother and daughters in the kitchen. Several years ago, when the girls were little, I went through chemotherapy during the holidays. That year, I wasn’t interested in eating or cooking many favorite foods: green beans for my dad, mac and cheese for my gram, and of course lots of pie.
While there were many aspects of the holiday we looked forward to, we didn’t feel good about perpetuating a tradition that erases Native people or their struggle. For these reasons, we decided to shift the focus of our celebration to sharing gratitude for food and family, while at the same time doing what we can to increase visibility for Native justice.
Whether you choose to reclaim, reframe or throwout Thanksgiving altogether… here is a shortlist of actions you can take to repair the harm done by settler-colonialism.
Don’t teach romanticized versions of Thanksgiving.
Give your kids age-appropriate information about the true origin stories of our country.
Tiny tots may not need to know the gory details of colonizer’s early contact with Indigenous folks (and yes, there are lots of gory details). It’s still important not to gloss over important aspects of our history. If you agree it’s bad to fill kids’ heads with “happy slave” narratives, you shouldn’t be teaching them Indigenous folks were yucking it up over pumpkin pie with their best buds the pilgrims. This piece titled, Deconstructing the Myths of “The First Thanksgiving” is a great place to start.
