Enter Thanks/Giving/Taking

I have been traveling quite a bit over the past two weeks. Up to Toronto for the Alchemy lecture, which was stunning, amazing, needed, everything. Over to Montreal for ASA, which was weird but good. Back home and then up to a thing at Harvard and then back again. And then all of a sudden it is Thanksgiving week, and I am not prepared at all. Amidst it all.

I used to have more of a plan for what I wanted to say here, but I have been, I don’t know, maybe running out of steam, maybe just overwhelmed. So I thought I’d share the two things I’ve written about Thanksgiving heading into that holiday.

From last year in Hyperallergic, “You Cannot Give Thanks for What is Stolen”.

From 2019 in TruthOut, “Thanksgiving is Dedicated to the Ruthlessness of English Settlers”.

I was asked recently to give a talk about the “real” meaning of Thanksgiving, and I declined. Mostly because I think I have already said what I have to say, but also because I’m already tired of the hand wringing about it. Maybe I should be more generous, but maybe, too, I don’t have to keep on explaining it. Or maybe I just have other things I want to be doing with my time and energy.

I do think that there is no one way to do Thanksgiving for Indigenous people. We can make it our own. We can do whatever we want with it. Settlers don’t get to decide what it means to us, and that is perhaps the thing I do want to say.

(Give me all the pies)