00:00When people ask me why I don't celebrate Thanksgiving, it's a simple question.
00:04My family doesn't celebrate genocide.
00:06That's all I have to say to people.
00:08I don't feel like I need to explain myself more.
00:11But obviously as a young girl, it was extremely challenging to have those difficult conversations with people around me
00:17because I was the only one that wasn't participating in something that everyone else was.
00:30The National Day of Mourning
00:42The National Day of Mourning started in 1970 in Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts.
00:47Plymouth is an important location because that's where the Mayflower landed in around 1620.
00:53The Mayflower was a ship that came from England and brought over settlers from England to Massachusetts.
00:59The National Day of Mourning is an important day for Native and Indigenous people because it honors our ancestors.
01:05It also celebrates the accurate history of what happened during that time period.
01:10In traditional American culture, Thanksgiving is supposed to honor the time that pilgrims and Native Americans came together to celebrate the harvest.
01:18When in reality, that's not what happened.
01:21What really happened was a genocide.
01:23The National Day of Mourning
01:45There are longstanding forms of oppression that Native people still are struggling with to this day.
01:52And the Day of Mourning is also a political protest that brings together allies, Indigenous people together to say that we are still here
02:01and that the oppression of Native American people is still alive and well.
02:05And that it's important for us to know what's going on so that we can work to create transformative solutions for change.
02:11In 2016, I had the honor of being one of the primary speakers at the Day of Mourning.
02:29During my speech, I took a quote from the book When We Fight, We Win by Greg Jobin Leeds and Nahi Tarte.
02:35This book is so important to me because it celebrates the wins from our communities.
02:40During this time of turmoil in 2016 when Trump had just been elected into the presidency,
02:45I wanted to shed just a small bit of light on how important it is for our communities to keep fighting.
02:51The Day of Mourning
03:05It matters to me that people know about this day because the invisibility that Native and Indigenous people face contributes to the erasure of our culture.
03:14Growing up, oftentimes I felt ostracized, feeling alone and isolated that I wasn't celebrating Thanksgiving.
03:21I felt like I couldn't tell people, oh, we don't celebrate Thanksgiving.
03:25It became a point of isolation for me.
03:27And as I got older and older, I understood more about what the Day of Mourning meant.
03:31And every year it had more meaning to me.
03:33It's a day where Native people feel seen.
03:36It's a day where they feel honored, where their ancestors feel honored.
03:40And having allies and like-minded individuals come together during that day really pushes forward the work that Indigenous activists working on the front lines of all sorts of organizations are doing.
03:52My friends that had celebrated Thanksgiving before now celebrate the Day of Mourning.
03:57Not because they're forced to, not because I tell them to, but because we've had these difficult conversations.
04:03And now they understand the true history of what this day means, that they've been able to change and shift the way that they see the day.
04:11And that is the power of education right there.
Comments