Title

Decolonizing Thanksgiving

Description

"As we head into the Thanksgiving holiday weekend in the United States, it’s great to think about all the things we can be grateful for. It is good to have a time to pause and reflect, to participate in the seasonality of gratitude for the year’s bountiful harvest, and to gather with family and friends. (We’ll ignore the über-consumerism of the day following Thanksgiving…)

Many of us probably know by now, however, that the story many of us learned in school about the first Thanksgiving is rather inaccurate at best, and racist and paternalistic in many ways, with a focus on the Manifest Destiny idea of the divine mandate for Europeans to conquer the “New World” in the name of Christ and country.

A few questions come to mind (at least my mind), for those of us with European-American roots, such as:

Should we even celebrate Thanksgiving, since it’s so tainted with colonialism?
What might it look like to “decolonize” our own understandings and our culture?
How can we do this work in a way that encourages our own folks to partner, rather than making them (our White brethren) feel further ostracized, but while also speaking real truth?
What can we do this Thanksgiving to begin to reconcile relationships damaged in the colonial era, both human to human and human to this land?"

Date

11/21/2017

Creator(s)

Cherice Bock

Article Type

Blog Post

Denomination

Indigenous Traditions

Audience

All audiences/General public

Rights

This information and image were accessed at https://watersheddiscipleship.org/2017/11/21/decolonizing-thanksgiving/?emci=51b6883e-5489-ee11-8925-00224832e811&emdi=033d1d6d-198a-ee11-8925-00224832e811&ceid=14356236 on 11/23/2023.

Issues

Mindfulness & Simplicity

Farms, Food, Gardens

Racism