Thanksgiving is regarded as a holiday to celebrate being around people that we love, and practice gratitude for the things that we have as well as the experiences we’ve been through in the year. But the act of celebrating being being thankful for something could happen at any time of the year. Yet, when we choose to celebrate Thanksgiving as a national holiday one day of the year — a day that truly celebrates is genocide of Indigenous people.
We have to recognize that celebration and gratitude are not one-time things. These are daily practices that can be done alone or with loved ones all the time. But when we expect those feelings to occupy our minds on this specific day each year, we are saying that we condone the violence that was done to us and our families. We are condoning the murder of Indigenous people, who have known this land all their lives, yet are still live under the threat of being erased from what is theirs. We are applauding the fact that the privileges that we have would not be prevalent without the murder and destruction it took to allow them to have power.
I choose to take myself away from the Thanksgiving table because I no longer want to participate in a holiday that regurgitates the same violence and genocide that started this nation we call the United States, or celebrate the colonialism that continues to penetrate many other communities to this day. I choose to make it known that history cannot be erased with fancy dinners and cheap wine. This repeats every time we gather for the Thanksgiving holiday. My existence in this world is not to be taken for granted; my resistance is not to be made light of. I choose to give up comfort for the acknowledgment that things need to change,and reparations and land sovereignty need to be part of the solutions for us to truly work toward being free.
Our gathering around dead flesh, sweet desserts and card games isn’t enough to neglect the deep conversations we need to have about the “politics” of this country. Let’s not think of Thanksgiving as a time to forget all our troubles, but a time to divest from white supremacy and have the difficult conversations we keep hiding from. White supremacy and colonialism started this mess that we are in within the United States.
All of the white supremacists that have seeming only“popped up” recently are not these new figures exclusively influenced by Trump; they’ve always been here. But now they are working harder than ever to erase us. Yet we continue to excuse their prevalence and chalk it up to ignorance. In reality, this is a well-oiled machine that is fed with the lies we’re taught in schools, the murder that is justified by the color of our skin and our cultural differences. The United States has wrecked our communities to the point where we’ve had to become codependent survival.
We never hold the nation accountable for not cleaning up the messes it’s created. Instead, we revel in our powerlessness and give in by saying, “But Thanksgiving is about love and warmth.” Where was the love and warmth when the first Thanksgiving dinner took place? Where was the love and warmth when that Thanksgiving dinner got declared a national holiday?
The day after Thanksgiving, the leftovers will still be there — both from the dinner table and from the pain and trauma that we feel from the oppression we face every day. Just as we would say“f**k Christopher Columbus” on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we need to continue that spirit through the Thanksgiving holiday until they tear down every reminder of the harm they have committed. Let’s continue to build solidarity with Indigenous people like we did during the #NoDAPL movement.
