{"id":316849,"date":"2020-11-24T18:23:22","date_gmt":"2020-11-24T23:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/?p=316849"},"modified":"2023-11-08T20:12:05","modified_gmt":"2023-11-09T01:12:05","slug":"native-leaders-discuss-the-mythical-harvest-feast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2020\/11\/native-leaders-discuss-the-mythical-harvest-feast\/","title":{"rendered":"Giving thanks for what, exactly?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t
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A panel of Indigenous speakers discusses how Indigenous communities celebrate Thanksgiving.<\/p>

Jon Chase\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\t

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\n\t\tGiving thanks for what, exactly?\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t
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\n\t\tLiz Mineo\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\tHarvard Staff Writer\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/address>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t

\n\t\t\tNative leaders discuss holiday harvest feast and how they mark a day of loss\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\n<\/header>\n\n\n\n
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Ruth Buffalo celebrated Thanksgiving like just everyone else when was she growing up in the\u00a0Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, home to the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara\u00a0Nation in central North Dakota.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven on the reservation, we would have construction paper to do all the decorations for Thanksgiving,\u201d said Buffalo, who became the first Native American woman elected to the North Dakota state legislature in 2018. \u201cIt was confusing. The story about the Pilgrims and the Indians; we didn\u2019t dive deep into the true history.\u201d<\/p>\n

These days, Buffalo says she marks the holiday honoring her roots. \u201cThe four-day weekend for mainstream Thanksgiving holiday means spending time with my family and going back to the area where my grandparents\u2019 house is still standing,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd just being there in the country, getting reconnected with the land.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buffalo spoke at the Indigenous Inspirers Panel<\/a> on Monday evening sponsored by the Harvard Political Union, the College Events Board, the Harvard University Native American Program<\/a> (HUNAP), and Natives at Harvard College. Moderated by Jason Packineau, HUNAP community coordinator, the event featured six Indigenous leaders and focused on how Native American and First Nations peoples of Canada observe Thanksgiving, which commemorates a harvest feast shared by the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags in 1621.<\/p>\n

The storybook tale of the Thanksgiving encounter obscures the history of oppression, land theft, and genocide of the Indigenous peoples who inhabited the continent long before it became the United States. As History Professor Philip Deloria wrote in an article<\/a> in The New Yorker last year, Thanksgiving represents \u201ca fable of interracial harmony.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n

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\u201cThe First Thanksgiving,\u201d (1915) a painting by Jean Louis Gerome Ferris, depicts the \u201cstorybook tale\u201d version.<\/p>

Wikimedia Commons\/Public Domain<\/p><\/figcaption>\r\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t

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For many Native Americans, the holiday is a day of mourning. For the past decade, Sadada Jackson \u201919, a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School and a member of the Natick Nipmuc Tribe, has gone to Cole\u2019s Hill in Plymouth to join the National Day of Mourning, an annual protest held on Thanksgiving Day by the United American Indians of New England since 1970.<\/p>\n\r\n

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