Thanksgiving reads, and a fundraising request for Minneapolis Thanksgiving Pow Wow

In this blog:

• Spoiler Alert! Thanksgiving Doesn’t Prove the Indians Welcomed the Pilgrims, by By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker
• Thanksgiving Promotes Whitewashed History, So I Organized Truthsgiving Instead, by Christine Nobiss
• The Minneapolis Thanksgiving Celebration Pow Wow, funding request

Spoiler Alert! Thanksgiving Doesn’t Prove the Indians Welcomed the Pilgrims:

The article provides the backstory to Thanksgiving from an indigenous perspective

The Thanksgiving story as we know it is a story of unconditional welcome by the Indigenous peoples, a feel-good narrative that rationalizes and justifies the uninvited settlement of a foreign people by painting a picture of an organic friendship. A more accurate telling of the story, however, describes the forming of political alliances built on a mutual need for survival and an Indigenous struggle for power in the vacuum left by a destructive century of foreign settlement.

Thanksgiving Promotes Whitewashed History, So I Organized Truthsgiving Instead

The article offers links to other educational resources and decolonization tactics.

Thanksgiving needs a complete overhaul, in the same way Columbus Day is slowly being revisioned as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. To celebrate the current Thanksgiving mythology is to celebrate the act of land expansion through ethnic cleansing and slavery — most of which happened at the point of a gun.

Minneapolis Thanksgiving Celebration Pow Wow

The Minneapolis Thanksgiving Celebration Pow Wow Committee is planning to host the pow wow on November 28 – 30, 2019, at the Minneapolis American Indian Center. This celebration helps to provide a safe, accessible, and sober gathering for our urban Native community to come together during a time that historically can be difficult for us while we celebrate and give thanks for our community and traditional ways.

There is no entrance fees to ensure that the pow wow is accessible for all to enjoy.

Here is a site to donate to the Pow Wow. So far they have only raised $2,500 out of a goal of $20,000. Please help if you can.