Honour and respect the land on which you stand.
It is sacred Native land — stewarded, protected, and sustained by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years before European boots ever scarred its soil. This land did not begin its story with ships arriving on foreign shores. Its story was already rich with languages, governance, agriculture, spirituality, and deep ecological wisdom long before the late 1700s, when colonizers arrived and violently disrupted entire civilizations.
Let the earth remind you:
you stand on memory.
You stand on songs pressed into soil,
on rivers that once carried prayers,
on roots that knew your name before you ever knew theirs.
The common narrative of Thanksgiving is a sanitized fairy tale taught in schools — smiling “Pilgrims” and generous “Indians” sharing a peaceful meal. The reality is far more brutal. The colonizers who landed on these shores were not heroic pioneers forging a new world; they were invaders who brought disease, violence, theft, and devastation. They raped, pillaged, and plundered a thriving people and a living land, claiming entitlement through blood and doctrine.
Before porcelain plates and paper cut-outs of corn,
there were fires extinguished,
villages burned,
children taken,
and sacred languages forced into silence.
Yes, Indigenous people fed the starving colonizers. They showed compassion, humanity, and generosity to strangers who would soon repay them with betrayal. The Wampanoag and other tribes shared knowledge of farming, hunting, and survival — not because they were submissive, but because they believed in community, reciprocity, and the sacredness of life. Instead of gratitude, they were met with broken treaties, massacres, forced removals, and cultural erasure. This is the real story behind Thanksgiving.
They offered corn and kindness.
They received conquest and chains.
To celebrate Thanksgiving as a cheerful holiday of abundance without acknowledging this truth is to feast upon the trauma and mass graves of Indigenous peoples. It is gluttony layered over genocide. It is a performance of gratitude divorced from accountability. A holiday framed as unity while ignoring the systemic injustice that made it possible.
So let the table be quiet for once.
Let the silver rest, the stomach listen,
and let the land speak in the language of roots.
This does not mean people cannot gather, share food, or express gratitude. But it does mean we must stop romanticizing colonization and start honoring the people who paid the ultimate price for this nation’s comfort. True gratitude requires truth. True respect requires remembrance.
If we must gather,
let it not be with blind celebration
but with bare feet on memory
and open palms for repair.
Thanksgiving should not be a celebration of conquest disguised as tradition. It should be a day of reflection, mourning, and education — a time to amplify Indigenous voices, support Native sovereignty, and acknowledge the ongoing impacts of colonial violence that still shape our world today.
Let gratitude become action.
Plant native seeds in soil that remembers.
Return land where return is possible.
Support the sovereign voices
who protect the water
even when the water has been poisoned.
Listen to the elders.
Pay the knowledge keepers.
Teach the children the names
that colonial ink tried to erase.
Let us uplift Indigenous businesses, farmers, artists, and storytellers.
Let us challenge policies that dress destruction
in the language of progress.
Let us donate, advocate, and stand beside
instead of speaking over.
Let Thanksgiving transform
from a ritual of denial
into a season of conscious remembrance —
where the meal is accompanied by truth,
by names spoken with care,
by stories not rewritten for comfort.
Let us learn to say:
We are sorry —
not as performance,
but as promise.
A promise to protect what remains,
to restore what can still be healed,
to walk as guests, not owners,
on sacred ground.
This is how a holiday becomes a healing.
This is how remembrance turns to responsibility.
This is how justice grows — not from guilt alone,
but from deliberate, living change.
The land remembers.
The ancestors remember.
And so should we.
Not just with words,
but with how we live.
With how we vote.
With how we teach.
With how we listen.
The land does not ask for perfection.
It asks for partnership.
And the ancestors —
they ask to be remembered
not only in mourning,
but in the future we choose
to build with reverence.
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