Many, if not most of my friends say that Thanksgiving is their favorite holiday.
My partner, Kristin, and I have never really been those people, having somewhat complicated family connections, a story to which I’m sure many can relate. However, we enjoyed our yearly #friendsgiving for a while there. Everyone does potluck, gets to share a little taste of home, and then chill with chosen family.
But something never felt fully right to us about this celebration.
We began to interrogate this feeling, starting with the food commonly associated with Thanksgiving, which led us to examine how settler-colonialism is literally cooked into our most common recipes. This opened a door, but there was still something deeper that felt off. So, we started looking at holiday traditions from an ancestral and trauma-informed point of view, which introduced us to exploring the Wheel of the Year.
While deepening our organizing at the beginning of lockdown, we attended the Rethinking Thanksgiving webinar, co-sponsored by Catalyst Project. It blew our minds wide open – giving us context and analysis about what felt wrong here. From then on, instead of celebrating Thanksgiving and/or friendsgiving, we’ve attended the webinar annually and started watching the livestream of the National Day of Mourning – “a day of remembrance and spiritual connection, as well as a protest against the racism and oppression that Indigenous people continue to experience worldwide.” We finally found a practice of the holiday that felt more aligned with the values we were showing up for in our organizing. For the last few years, we’ve attended the National Day of Mourning, in person, with our organizing community, the SURJ NYC Indigenous Solidarity Coordinators, and even some of our loved ones.
SURJ NYC Coordinators attend the National Day of Mourning in 2024.
These have now become some of our traditions, and although they’re more aligned, they’ve come with a loss. As we unlearn white supremacy and settler-colonialism day-by-day and year-by-year, we must also face grief and disillusionment. This work is hard, and in a world that’s burning down, with a cascade of increasingly terrifying headlines daily, the small joys we still hold, like a holiday meal shared with loved ones, can feel even more acutely painful to examine. And yet, if we truly want to live in a liberated world, we must learn how to navigate this discomfort and seek support whenever we can, particularly in community.
Chapter meeting is coming up on September 3 and the SURJ NYC Indigenous Solidarity Coordinators will be hosting a tender, honest conversation about what it might mean to show up to Thanksgiving differently. We’ll discuss many different options for how to align our actions with our de-colonial values on this complicated holiday, while holding the complexities about what we might be giving up in the process.
This chapter meeting is for everyone. Do you resonate with any of the above? Come on out. Are you activated or challenged by it? Come on out. Are you unsure what exactly we’re talking about and want to learn more? Is there someone you’ve been wanting to bring into SURJ NYC to see what we’re all about? This is a great opportunity for all of that.
Weaving this way of showing up into our resistance movements against authoritarianism and imperialism feels especially important to us right now. There are no easy answers. We’re here to ask hard questions together, learn from each other, and offer support around the pain points we’ve encountered as we’ve moved away from ‘traditionally’ celebrating Thanksgiving.
We hope you’ll join us - register here.
In solidarity,
Kyle & Kristin, and your SURJ NYC Indigenous Solidarity Coordinators (Alison, Elana, Grace, Katharine, and Sarah)