Dare to Care

Dismantling Racism Committee: Rethinking Thanksgiving

October 14, 2024, is Thanksgiving Day in Canada and Indigenous Peoples’ Day in the USA.  These two feasts complement one another. Giving thanks with family walks among the red maples, celebrating the golden harvests, and telling stories around the large dinner table are experiences of connection with all creation. Remembering Indigenous heritage, cultures, languages, foods and music with online learning or personal encounter are opportunities for healing.

Both feasts address major issues like climate change, food insecurity, and social fragmentation. We need Thanksgiving to reconnect in our flesh with nature and family and we need National Indigenous Peoples’ Days to learn from Indigenous Peoples, and begin to rethink, resist and rejoice.  Appreciating a family turkey dinner or Indigenous chanting and sitting together, we recognize that local is our healing and that local is our future. Both feasts are antidotes to the damaging effects of globalization. Perhaps thus, we will begin to rethink our National Thanksgiving Days.

Learn More! Read an article from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian Native Perspectives on Thanksgiving

Watch a video on decolonizing Thanksgiving and our lives.