Thanksgiving

Growing up in a Christian family in the Christian country of the Dominion of Canada, thanksgiving was regularly focused on that religious community. Canada celebrates only one day a year, the second Monday in October.

I remember one Thanksgiving in the early 1980’s CE where I brought a Commodore Vic 20 and put it in the front of St. Stevens United Church in Sudbury. I was thankful for computers, something I finally found that I was good at. I had other things we were thankful for in scrolling text across the screen, and some of the more regular thanksgiving items (flowers, foods, etc) were set all around.

At this stage of my life, when I hear the word “Thanksgiving”, I first think of the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving address: the words that come before all else.

This isn’t something that happens once a year, but before gatherings. They do this to bring thankfulness into their thinking, especially if they are making decisions as part of their governance (the oldest participatory democracy on the planet, estimated to have formed around 1132CE).

I have heard and read several different variations, and the specific words aren’t the focus. There is a general order and important things to include. Sometimes there is participation where, after a specific section, the larger gathering will repeat something like “and our minds are one” or “so be it in our minds”. If you have heard or read one, it is quite possibly different than the focus I’m using below.

I do wonder how different Canadian and US governance and culture would be if similar thanksgiving preceded gatherings.

People

I am a settler of Scottish, Irish and French descent, and make no personal claims to being in relation with peoples indigenous to this continent. I am extremely thankful to have learned more of the peoples and worldviews of this continent, and specifically about the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe who are leagues of nations/peoples who continue to steward the lands I have lived on and have sustained me my entire life.

I have so many people in my life that I am thankful for.

Mother Earth

Whether you call it Mother Earth or something else, I am thankful for this land that sustains us and other life.

Vegetation

I am thankful for vegetation, which like me is part of life, and I am dependent on vegetation for my life. While I grew up within Anthropocentrism which separates humans from other life and puts humans at the top of a hierarchy, this is not my current thinking. If anything, humans are the most needy of all life, and thus should be the most thankful and caring of all other life.

Four-legged creatures

I (we) extend greetings, to all of our relatives whether biologically related, human, or more-than humans.

Winged creatures

I thank the winged life who gift us with song, bright feathers, and sometimes members of their families for food. This is a time of year that many settlers eat turkey, and we should be thankful for all the winged offer us every day of our lives.

Relatives who live in the waters

Extending greetings to the relatives who live in the waters.

Water

Extending thanks to water itself. On average, humans are 60% water and yet this society is not sufficiently thankful for water. Water is life, and yet this society does not steward water such that Mother Nature can clean it to make it healthy to sustain our own or other life.

Lower Sky World

Thanks and greetings to all the relatives of the lower sky world such as the sun, moon, thunder.

Upper Sky World

The Haudenosaunee origin stories speak of Sky Woman falling to earth, such that there are ancestors to return to in that sky world after death.

Creation / Creator

Minds are turned to wherever it is that created everything. There is a humility in recognizing that we don’t know. There is also not a gender assigned.

Personal….

I’ve sometimes heard the last being for people to add their own that they are personally thankful for.

I’m thankful for anyone who reads this, and possibly explores more about the Thanksgiving address. If you are a settler, please also consider learning more about the Indigenous peoples near you and seek kinship relations and give thanks.