I’m done feeling guilty for celebrating Thanksgiving as a Native woman
On Thanksgiving, I’m usually overheating in a rust-colored sweater, yelling at my kid to change out of his dirty hoodie and cooking a dry turkey with gravy that resembles a Jell-O mold. I feel guilty the whole time. Although my father’s family is Native American, of the Muscogee Creek Nation, I grew up in California with my mother, who is white. I mostly didn’t think about my tribe. As I learned more about my family’s experiences going back to the Trail of Tears, I began to understand the dark emotions that Thanksgiving evokes in Indigenous people.
When I had my own family, roasting the turkey and managing family dysfunction became my job as the holiday host. Feelings of low-level betrayal came with my choice to run the turkey trot rather than take the ferry to Alcatraz for a protest. This year — with the help of my paternal grandma’s wisdom and her killer pecan pie — I intend to hold the contradictions lightly and find purpose and even joy in my autumnal gathering.
As a kid, I didn’t recognize the fantasy or the harm of the story that the Indians helped the Pilgrims grow some gourds, they ate turkey together, and then lived in happy co-existence. I collaged with red and orange leaves and made models of the California missions with sugar cubes.
The Indians were actually the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe who lived on the land around Plymouth Rock for thousands of years before the Mayflower came along with diseases, guns and an insatiable hunger for land. I don’t doubt that the starving Plymouth people had extraordinary gratitude for help and food; I’m hard-pressed to imagine what the Indigenous people — even during the 1600s — were grateful to their colonizers for. Historians estimate that 10 to 15 million (and as high as 112 million) people lived in what is now the United States at the time of “contact” with Europeans and by 1900, colonization had reduced our population to under 250,000. It’s not something to raise a glass to.
Currently, the United States does not engender much for Native people to appreciate. Environmental injustice — like the lack of access to fresh water for the Navajo Nation (30% of Navajo citizens have no running water), the epidemic of violence against Native women (four out of five Indigenous women have experienced violence in their lifetime), and the disproportional rates of incarceration and longer terms in federal prisons for Native people.
With this reality, the smell of treachery can linger over a celebration of Native people and European colonizers gathering for a lovely meal.
“Quit your belly achin’,” I can almost hear my grandma — Mawmaw, I call her — say to that as she carefully rolls out her crusts. Mawmaw is my paternal grandmother and matriarch of our family. She is into no-nonsense perseverance rather than complaining about things we can’t change. There’s no time for crying when you’re making a turkey and ham dinner for 20, including your cousin’s ex-wife and the neighborhood elder who just lost her husband.
Mawmaw grew up outside of Beggs, Oklahoma, on the piece of land allotted to her mother when the U.S. government broke their promise to preserve “Indian Territory” for Indians. Sometimes her father sat up all night on the porch with his shot-gun ready. The Ku Klux Klan were known to lynch Indians around there. Mostly, Mawmaw and her eight siblings didn’t have time to “pitch a fit,” as she would say.
The area around the creek that ran through my family’s land often flooded, making it virtually useless for any kind of crops. They called it “the Bottoms.” Pecan trees grew in the Bottoms, though they were fickle. Some years Mawmaw and her siblings could gather baskets full of pecans; other years, nothing. Gooey nuts in a flaky crust was something to cherish.
That pie was one of the highlights of my life. Beyond delicious, it symbolizes my family’s connection to our land in Oklahoma. Even though the Muscogee people’s original homeland was in Georgia, Alabama and Florida, making Oklahoma an awkward kind of second-choice rental home, it’s what we have. I’m thankful for it and for my cousin, who still stewards our land.
Native Americans are not a monolithic group. Hundreds of tribes and millions of people live in cities, reservations and rural areas, each with their own take on Thanksgiving, from “I’m just going to stuff myself like everyone else,” to protesting at the National Day of Mourning Gathering at Plymouth Rock. Many of my friends will be on the ferry at 5:30 in the morning for the sunrise gathering on Alcatraz, federal land once occupied as an act of resistance in the 1970s. From sitting on the couch binging football to political protests, Indigenous people will be doing it all.
This year I will do something in between those instead of my usual running around in a crowded kitchen feeling hot and guilty. I alone cannot fix the problems of water rights and violence against Native women. Although as an attorney I am doing my best to help incarcerated people get fairer sentences and humane conditions in prison, I mostly can only do small everyday actions.
I love to run the turkey trot through the chilly streets of my small town. To anyone who will listen, I will acknowledge the Confederated Villages of Lisjan, the Cocheyon-speaking Ohlone people who owned and stewarded the land around here for thousands of years. Around tax time I will also say thank you to them by paying my voluntary land tax, called Shuumi.
I will bake a pecan pie with my kids, using Mawmaw’s recipe. I will try to wrangle help from my nieces and nephews; it’s such a treat to see them in real life rather than in an Instagram post. When we go around the table saying our gratitudes, after the meal but before my brother-in-law breaks out the Fireball, I will recite the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, a beautiful alternative to a traditional grace.
I will wear the sweater I bought online from B. Yellowtail, a Northern Cheyenne and Crow designer whom I champion. I just ordered the berry cake from Waypepah’s Kitchen in Oakland. I might even cheer on the Commanders (formerly known as the Redskins) for (finally!) changing their name. Supporting Native businesses, eating at restaurants led by Indigenous chefs, advocating for local tribes, and reading books by Native authors, like “Wandering Stars” by Tommy Orange, are acts of appreciation.
The fantasy that Native people shared their harvest with the Pilgrims and then happily coexisted with them is nothing to celebrate. The fact that many Indigenous people survived and now thrive is something to be grateful for. I won’t post my Thanksgiving table on Instagram; the day and what it represents is just too complicated for a picture of the perfectly browned turkey and foliage emojis. But I will stuff my face with pecan pie.
This article was originally published on TODAY.com