Hey, friends! Today America celebrates Thanksgiving as a time to come together and give thanks for our blessings. I am all for practicing daily gratitude, but do you know the real, unfiltered history of Thanksgiving? You’re in luck!

I’ll sum it up for you: the original Thanksgiving was a celebration of a massacre, a genocide of Indigenous Americans. Hundreds of men, women, non-binary folks, and children from the Pequot tribe were slaughtered by colonizers, and the governor of the then Massachusetts Bay colony deemed the day “Thanksgiving Day”. All the White people were thankful to rid the land of its native inhabitants of thousands of years so that White people could own the land, assimilate the “less resistant” Indigenous, and colonize, colonize, colonize.

Instead of praying and being thankful for our country and our White privilege this year, I challenge you to look up the history yourself. Share this with your family members. Reflect on what it means to commit genocide. Practice gratitude today and every day with the intention of being informed and acknowledging our egregious history and the privileges that come with that genocide and assimilation. I may or may not the best houseguest for this holiday, as my family might tell you, because I will be talking about this constantly.

Are you now having some sort of somatic, visceral feelings? That’s normal. We have a brutal and violent history, and I encourage you to learn instead of look away. I’m here to talk while you process and absorb.

Thanks for reading!

xMae