Native American advocates stop after a vigil during the 38th National Day of Mourning at Coles Hill in Plymouth, Mass., on November 22, 2007. Condemn racism and daily abuse century to the Natives, members of Native American tribes from across New England will gather on Thanksgiving 2021 to solemnly celebrate National Day of Mourning.
Lisa Poole / AP
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Lisa Poole / AP
Native American advocates stop after a vigil during the 38th National Day of Mourning at Coles Hill in Plymouth, Mass., on November 22, 2007. Condemn racism and daily abuse century to the Natives, members of Native American tribes from across New England will gather on Thanksgiving 2021 to solemnly celebrate National Day of Mourning.
Lisa Poole / AP
Members of Native American tribes from all over New England are gathering in the seaside town where the Pilgrims settled – not to give thanks, but to mourn the natives around the world who have suffered centuries of racism and mistreatment.
A solemn National Funeral Service on Thursday in downtown Plymouth, Massachusetts, will remember illness and oppression that European settlers brought to North America.
Kisha James, a member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag and Oglala Lakota tribes and granddaughter of Wamsutta Frank James, founder of the event, said: “We natives have no reason to celebrate the arrival of the event. present of pilgrims.
“We wanted to educate people so they understood that the stories we learned in school about the first Thanksgiving were all lies,” James said.
“For us, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning, because we remember the millions of our ancestors who were murdered as pilgrims by uninvited European colonists. Today, we and many natives around the country say: ‘No Thanks, No Give.’
It’s been the 52nd year that the united American Indians of New England have hosted the event on Thanksgiving Day. The tradition started in 1970.
Indigenous peoples and their supporters will gather in person at noon on Cole’s Hill, a windswept mound overlooking Plymouth Rock, a memorial to the arrival of the colonists. They will also live event.
Participants will beat drums, offer prayers and condemn what organizers describe as an “unjust system based on racism, settled colonialism, sexism, Homosexuality and the Destruction of the Earth for Profit” before marching through the historic district of downtown Plymouth.
This year, they will also highlight the troubling legacy of federal boarding schools that have sought to integrate Indigenous youth into white society in the United States as well as in Canada, where Hundreds of bodies have been discovered on the basis of the old residential schools for indigenous children.
Brian Moskwetah Weeden, President of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council, said on Boston Public Radio earlier this week that Americans owe his tribe a debt of gratitude for helping the Pilgrims survive the monsoons. their first brutal winter.
“People need to understand that you need to be grateful every day – that’s how our ancestors thought and navigated this world,” Weeden says. “Because we are grateful, we are willing to share … and we have good intentions and good hearts.”
That’s not reciprocated in the long term, Weeden added.
“That’s why, 400 years later, we’re still sitting here fighting for the little piece of land we still have, and trying to keep the Commonwealth and the federal government accountable,” he said. responsibility.
“Because 400 years later, we don’t really have much to show or be grateful for. So I think it’s important for people to be grateful to our ancestors who helped others. Pilgrimage exists and plays a complex role in the birth of this nation.”
