Poster by Ernesto Yerena, featuring Helen Red Feather of the Lakota-- a 1973 Wounded Knee== veteran-- at the Standing Rock reservation in 2016. She was originally photographed by Ayşe Gürsöz while protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline. The DAPL violates treaty rights, compromises access to clean water and threatens the sacred burial grounds of the Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes. (An Indigenous person is depicted in the center of the image. They are elderly, with a reddish-orange/coral colored t-shirt.Their arm is raised high, with a proud fist up. Their facial expression is serene and purposeful, with their eyes looking upwards. On the poster, over the turquoise background, there's a large, stylized text reading "WE THE RESILIENT". Underneath that line is smaller, bold text "HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE". There are stylized arrow-like shapes, also in maroon/red, flanking the main title. A small design of a bird/hawk is visible on the upper right part of the background in a brownish-reddish color. The t-shirt the person wears say RESPECT OUR WATER" and "NODAPL.")
If you're in the United States, today's a national holiday.
It is (as so many US holidays are– and so many holidays generally, honestly)... emotionally layered.
It's a time of love and family and togetherness for many. A time of, well, complicated, fraught family stuff and/or loneliness for many. And it's a communal celebration with the stories of colonialism and Indigenous genocide baked in.
That's a lot.
Here's a piece on the history of the Thanksgiving holiday from an Indigenous perspective, with a few more of the less-flattering (to settlers) details than they teach kids, and here'sa version with some resources for engaging kids.
And here, below, are some other offerings from Indigenous culture– for today, for every day.
