With Thanksgiving approaching, many of you may be finalizing plans for the big day. But many of you may also feel torn over whether or not to celebrate. You may be wondering how to observe the day while still respecting Native people, or you just may need the right words to help get your family on the same page. It can become a question of whether you should uphold long-standing family traditions, create new traditions, or forgo the holiday completely.
Here we discuss the true history of Thanksgiving and offer insight into how to talk to your kids about Thanksgiving history, its problematic origins, and impact on Indigenous people as well as ways to respectfully observe harvest traditions with your family.
Thanksgiving History: Truth vs. myth
How to celebrate Thanksgiving respectfully
Tudor suggests forgoing Thanksgiving as a holiday and creating new traditions with your family. My own family, with our Powhatan ancestry, decided to do exactly that. We no longer acknowledge Thanksgiving as a holiday and instead choose to spend time together with a meal, playing board games, and just hanging out together, with no mention of traditional Thanksgiving. If we want turkey and stuffing, we can buy it in February or March without the crowds and chaos.
“We live in the DC area, so we sometimes purchase our Thanksgiving from the Native American chefs who work at the Smithsonian Native American Museum of the American Indian,” homeschooling mom of two Elle Cole told Mom.com. “My children love the experience of visiting the museum and participating in the activities, and they love the food. I’ve also taken them to a colonial farm to learn about early American life.”
It’s about creating new traditions and ensuring your children understand that what they learn in school isn’t necessarily the actual truth. Having an open mind and empathetic heart is key, and being willing to buck tradition is also important. Getting some family members to change can be a challenge, so you may only be able to meet them where they are, and that’s OK, too. You’re doing the hard work by ensuring your children know the truth and that is to be commended.
As long as you are doing the work, it’s also important to acknowledge that for some Native people, the fourth Thursday of November is a National Day of Mourning. On her blog, Tudor shared a video explaining how and why this came to be.
This may be a good start for young children and family members who are opposed to the idea of forgoing Thanksgiving. Small steps like sharing that video and learning what Native land you’re living on, may go a long way toward acknowledging that the Thanksgiving history we learned in school wasn’t the whole story.
