Andreanne Catt is a youth leader in the movement for indigenous rights. She is part of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Nations and Sicangu Lakota, and works with Seeding Sovereignty, a non-profit that brings indigenous women together against dangerous environmental practices.
My family does not celebrate Thanksgiving, as we do not celebrate our colonizers’ holidays. I live in the one of the poorest places in the country, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, which is a three hours’ drive away from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. My family does not have enough money to have a feast for Thanksgiving, and neither do most families on reservations. Thanksgiving is not a holiday to us — it is a day of mourning. If this seems radical or overdramatic, look back at everything I just told you. You might see why we feel this way.
The first “Thanksgiving” invited violence, disease, rape, and other elements of colonialism into our land, so you can understand why we may not see Thanksgiving the same way you do.
In grade school, you are taught that the Pilgrims sailed across from Europe in the Mayflower. Two months later, they landed in what is today Plymouth, Massachusetts. You are told that Squanto, an indigenous person from the Patuxet band of the Wampanoag Tribe, taught the Pilgrims how to grow food, to catch fish, to prevent them from starving to death. In 1621, the Plymouth colonists, or Pilgrims, and Wampanoag Tribe, or “Indians,” shared an autumn harvest feast that lasted three days — the first “Thanksgiving.” Or so you’re taught.
The first “Thanksgiving” actually started with a treaty between England and the Wampanoag Nation. This treaty proposed that the Wampanoag would protect the English from any enemies, and that the English would do the same for the Wampanoag. But as all first nation tribes know, treaties meant nothing to the colonizers. Soon after, up to 25,000 English men landed in the “New World.” The sickness they brought wiped out most of the Wampanoag Nation, but this was not the end.
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