Native American Heritage Day
A Time to Honor and Reflect
Today—the Friday after Thanksgiving—officially became “Native American Heritage Day” in 2009, when President Barack Obama signed the resolution. Still, many Native Americans feel slighted that our country’s most highly commercialized shopping day was chosen as the national day to honor their heritage and people. According to Native Hope—a nonprofit organization that seeks to dismantle barriers and inspire hope for unheard Native voices—only 184 out of the 567 federally recognized Native American tribes officially supported the bill.
For many Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning and protest since it commemorates the arrival of settlers in North America and the centuries of oppression and genocide that followed. While some Native Americans choose to reject the Thanksgiving holiday entirely, others embrace the opportunity to have a day focused on giving thanks. “Thanksgiving as a holiday originates from the Native American philosophy of giving without expecting anything in return,” the Native Hope website explains. “Long before settlers arrived, native tribes were celebrating the autumn harvest, and the gift of Mother Earth’s abundance. Native American spirituality, both traditionally and today, emphasizes gratitude for creation, care for the environment, and recognition of the human need for communion with nature and others.”
Wampanoag Tribe spokesman, Steven Peters, says, “Gathering with family, enjoying our company, sharing our blessings, and giving thanks for all that we have is a good thing. I say have more thanksgiving events throughout the year. I also ask that you take a moment in that day to remember what happened to my people and the history as it was recorded and not the narrative that we have been given in the history books.”
Native Hope’s wish for Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Day is that we use these holidays as an opportunity to reflect upon our collective history and to celebrate the beauty, strength, and resilience of the Native tribes of North America. “We hope that this Thanksgiving, the hearts of all people, Native and non-Native, are filled with hope, healing, and a desire to dismantle the barriers—physical, economic, educational, psychological, and spiritual—that divide us and oppress us.”
Photo credit: Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian
I found this beautiful poem on Native Hope’s Instagram feed by an unknown author, and it is in this spirit that we’re sharing our next “Take A Moment” micro-meditation on gratitude:
Our quest,
our earth walk,
is to look within,
to know who we are,
to see that we are connected to all things,
that there is no separation,
only in the mind.
