This year, I will spend time on Thanksgiving reflecting on my conflicted feelings around it. It's time to either let go of this day of thanks or find a way to reconcile with it. It's been many years since my tradition included the old story about the friendly Native Americans who taught struggling colonists how to survive in the "New World" and how they all sat down to a great feast. Still, the holiday and the story of friendship continue to be a source of erasure, or at least minimization of the U.S.'s violence and negative mythmaking against Native Americans.
Holidays dedicated to gratitude are necessary because appreciation is essential to experiencing and creating goodness in the world. Many traditions and cultures give thanks in the fall for a bountiful harvest. The open question is whether Thanksgiving can be this kind of tradition for me.
My sister and her husband, Teresa and John, have a valued tradition of working together to prepare a wonderful meal, often spatchcock chicken with other traditional holiday sides. Friends bring dishes, and the dinner begins with sharing what we are grateful for. Teresa and John are in India this year, and I begged off other invitations to use this time as a personal retreat before the rush of the year-end holidays. I am thankful to be able to spend this retreat in a light-filled home that overlooks the Columbia River Gorge, with four-legged companionship.
What has been coming to mind this past week is the creation of a short ritual for the dinner table in the form of storytelling. Such a ritual may help me integrate my conflicted feelings around the holiday. Instead of simply dropping the myth of the story of Thanksgiving, could I share a more accurate story as a way of acknowledging not only the horrible things we did as a young country, but also the huge debt we owe to Indigenous people? Stories as acknowledgment are steps toward healing, a way to get back into right relationship with each other and the Earth.
Below is my version of a buried story that needs telling. Young children should hear such stories (they can handle it), but many adults need help with this kind of truth-telling. It blows my mind that I had never heard aspects of this story during my education, which went up through a doctorate in the humanities.
Thanksgiving Story
For those of us who are not Indigenous, our ancestors came to this land as immigrants looking for a better life. Some who came earned the friendship of the people living on the land for millennia. The land didn't belong to these people because, in their worldview, you can't own land. Instead, you live respectfully with it. Regardless of the beliefs and values of the settlers who arrived, they were all impacted by a colonizing mentality that caused unfathomable harm. This mentality was a prevailing view that the Europeans who came were morally superior to those living on the land. The wisdom traditions dating back thousands of years were unappreciated and degraded.
The document that laid the foundation for a colonizing mindset, which led to cultural and literal genocide, was the Doctrine of Discovery. Written in 1493, it predated settlers coming to this country, but its devastating impact moved here from Europe. The Doctrine of Discovery was a papal decree declaring that black and brown people had only half a soul. It was an international law doctrine that authorized explorers to claim terra nullius in their country's name when Christians did not populate the land. This decree laid the groundwork for Europeans to take land either by sword or conversion. It led to colonization throughout the world, mass murder, and enslavement of people. It led to the establishment of residential schools, the removal of children from their families, and the attempted genocide of ancient cultures. It led to the momentous, ongoing burdens of intergenerational, complex trauma.
Most people in this country are unaware of this 500-year-old document that continues to impact Native peoples negatively. In an 1823 Supreme Court case, the Doctrine of Discovery became part of U.S. federal law and was used to dispossess Native peoples of their land. And it remains on the books to this day! In a 2005 Supreme Court case, Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote the majority opinion, denying sovereign rights to Indigenous peoples who had repurchased land that they ceded to the state.* This 20-year-old judgment is a powerful example of how unexamined history continues to cause harm, including by otherwise caring, compassionate people.
In March 2023, over 500 years after the Catholic Church issued the Doctrine of Discovery, the Vatican finally repudiated it. The statement said it "did not adequately reflect the dignity and rights of Indigenous peoples" and the views have never been part of the Catholic faith. It said the documents were manipulated for political acts to justify immoral acts. But it went on to say it was right to "recognize these errors" and acknowledge the document’s terrible effects on Indigenous peoples and ask for their forgiveness.
My Partial Gratitude List
I am grateful to friends, family, and chosen family who offer me love, support, and emotional sustenance.
To all those who take seriously the ongoing work of learning to live in right relationship with each other and the Earth: I am grateful. (A special shout out to Vince Two Eagles and Amy Doom, who opened my eyes to the Doctrine of Discovery.)
I am grateful to everyone who stands up for the dignity of all, equally and without exception.
To the truth tellers and those surfacing buried stories, to the people who loudly and boldly speak up for peace and against violent narratives, even when it makes people uncomfortable, maybe especially when it makes us uncomfortable: I am grateful.
I am grateful to everyone who declares that love is the only way to move toward peace and expresses that love in countless little ways daily.
Please share what you are thankful for in the comments section.