In the Name of Gratitude

By Asiba Tupahache

The act of thanksgiving is wonderful. Especially today, people need time set aside for family, kinship, and gratitude. I am a woman of the Matinecoc Nation, a nation indigenous to what is now known as Long Island, New York. While our traditional time for thanksgiving occurs in October, I offer this in the spirit of our common humanity. My people are misrepresented as extinct. As a survivor of the erasure of my people, I am committed to moving forward in truth and clarity to achieve authentic unity and stability.

I will start by saying that the American holiday designated as Thanksgiving includes good feelings of kinship, purpose, affirmation, and gratitude. These feelings are also laced with myths, folklore, falsehoods, and misreads that encode behaviors and attitudes that can put us in a bad place. In my opinion, it is critical to differentiate our bona fide human needs from myth, folklore, and outright lies. Myths and folklore are good when applied appropriately. However, myths and folklore are not the same as enforced distortions and falsehoods that can range from violent behaviors to subtle messaging. This distinction is necessary to separate my affirmation of thanksgiving and gratitude from the nonsense America has normalized.

America’s Founding vs. America’s Invasion

Before the United States of America existed, it was common practice for European colonial governors to celebrate successful massacres of Indigenous peoples with what they referred to as a day of thanksgiving. One example comes from the 1643 massacre of my people. This massacre was infamous for the barbaric savagery of butchering babies and drowning children while severely wounded parents were forced to watch. Because the slaughter of infants and children was successful, the Dutch Governor Willem Kieft praised the colonists for having acted with Roman valor. So the idea of “thanksgiving” in the 1600s was commonly a direct reference to successful raids, invasions, and murders of Indigenous peoples to “ruin,” murder, and erase them.

Imposing Present-Day Notions onto the Past

While Indigenous people of the Northeast are known to have peacefully feasted with Pilgrims in 1621, neither group sent invitations to the other for Thanksgiving dinner. That 1621 event would eventually coagulate as the “first Thanksgiving” through a driven need for meaning, fulfilled by a rebranding of American interactions with Indigenous peoples overall. The event was not the start of a recurring annual holiday, nor was it considered “the first” during that era. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln established Thanksgiving in an effort to heal the wounds and ravages of the Civil War. Projecting this presidential proclamation more than 200 years back onto the 1621 event—before America existed—is simply not a good idea, especially when the projection is designed to cover up, deny, or redefine an unwanted truth.

Founding vs. Invasion

America is on stolen land obtained through invasion and mass murder. The invasion was, in fact, rebranded as America’s founding to sterilize the immorality of invasion. Many social, emotional, and psychological notions were invented to ensure this rebranding was baked into the American mind. The mythical narrative of the “first Thanksgiving” is one of them. Multitudes of school plays and pageants are defined by this folklore. There is a euphoria and temporary high that comes with these joyous activities. But there is a problem with all of that. There is an insidious underbelly that comes with forcefully covering up an unwanted truth. The mind becomes locked into only those beliefs permitted by the source of enforcement. Free thought, true education, and sovereign personhood are perceived as threats. The process of existing in compliance with controlled thought at the sacrifice of oneself is the definition of systemic oppression. When what we need as human beings is tainted by compliance under duress, the pursuit of what we need can be risky, dangerous, misguided, hurtful, and obliterating. This is why it is necessary to separate our humanity from the falsehoods we’ve collectively been conditioned to accept.

Now, this might fly in the face of the “huddled masses” coming to the shores of the American dream narrative, but nobody brought any land with them when they arrived. Romantic immigrant talk doesn’t erase the fact that America is built on stolen land. The consequences, no matter how dressed up, are still there. However, given all that—here we are. We as human beings are good. We all woke up this morning with another chance to uphold our humanity by purging the toxic rationale of oppression. Caring for each other is in our human DNA.

I uphold and cherish the humanity of everyone, as I do my own. When I guarantee your humanity, I know it will be there for me. As I walk in the truth that my people are not extinct, I am not erased, and that I am affirmed on my own terms, I am empowered to accept yours. I offer my heartfelt wish for new hope and strength to begin anew to all of you, with gratitude.

Asiba Tupahache
Matinecoc Nation
spiritofjanuary.com