Rising up, Thanksgiving was all the time my favourite. Fall was my favourite season- the primary cool chill of sweater climate and aid from the blazing warmth of Florida, the place I grew up. I adored the vacation artwork projects- the oranges, reds, and browns, the headdress feathers we’d shade, reduce and paste so we may gown up like Indian Princesses. I appreciated the Thanksgiving performs, the place we’d reenact the feast shared by comfortable Pilgrims and welcoming Native People. I cherished the turkeys and all of the turkey soup, turkey-cranberry stuffing sandwiches, and turkey divan leftovers that adopted. In contrast to Christmas and Easter, which meant a number of boring church providers, Thanksgiving was all about meals, household, and being grateful, which felt good. My household principally obtained alongside, so I’ve a number of fond household recollections about Thanksgiving.

After which I realized the reality…and discovered we’d all been lied to by revisionist historians. After which I felt responsible about loving Thanksgiving.

As a result of I’m dwelling half-time in Cape Cod and half-time within the San Francisco Bay Space as of late, I had hoped to spend this Thursday in Plymouth, standing in solidarity with the Native People honoring a nationwide day of mourning. Since 1970, Indigenous folks and their allies have gathered at midday on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth, simply above Plymouth Rock, to commemorate a Nationwide Day of Mourning on the US Thanksgiving vacation. For the Native folks, Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of tens of millions of Native folks, the hostile takeover, theft, and occupation of Native lands, and the erasure of Native cultures. Those that stand to honor the Nationwide Day of Mourning acknowledge the resilience of the Native Individuals, honor their tradition and spirituality, and protest the racism and oppression that Indigenous folks proceed to expertise worldwide.

However due to an surprising funeral and switch of occasions, I’m now in Columbus, Ohio with my household as a substitute, getting ready to have a good time a conventional colonizer’s Thanksgiving, with combined emotions of gratitude for my household and the happiness of bringing my accomplice Jeff to satisfy all of them for the primary time and likewise remorse that I’m not in Plymouth. These combined emotions are reminding me of so many paradoxes that our post-2020 world is requiring us to carry. The consolation of our black and white perception programs, our phantasm of certainty about our private and collective histories, our tolerance and even justification of so many egregious injustices on the earth that privilege some and deprive others, as if some folks matter extra and others matter much less.

The turkey is thawing and the cornbread is drying out for stuffing whereas we put together to take part in a nationwide charade- solely now, the charade is busted and with eyes huge open, there’s now a bittersweet high quality to the sweetness of reference to my household and the cognitive dissonance of pretending to have a good time one thing that may solely be mourned.

I want we may transfer Thanksgiving- hold the turkeys, hold the excuse to deal with what we’re grateful for, hold the explanation for flying in from all around the nation to be collectively, and quit the charade and the story behind why we collect. But when I refused to take part within the charade, my protest would go largely unnoticed. I might be lacking out on a household ritual- and it actually wouldn’t assist the Indigenous folks one bit.

However I determine no less than I can communicate right here concerning the torn emotions inside. I can honor the Wampanoag folks and the Nauset individuals who had been the unique inhabitants of the city I simply moved to within the Cape. I can honor the Iroquois and Algonquians, who had been the unique land inhabitants of Ohio, the place I’m scripting this. I can honor the Meewok individuals who as soon as lived on the land of my house in California. And I can verbalize the land acknowledgment of those folks earlier than we sit down for our vacation feast and benefit from the inexperienced bean casserole and cranberry sauce.

Some folks I do know really feel offended once I speak about issues like this. They suppose we shouldn’t let tradition wars take away our American traditions or taint our comfortable recollections. They need to faux to nonetheless be blissfully ignorant about the actual American historical past and hold their patriotic viewpoints unchallenged.

However I don’t agree with ostriching our painful previous as a nation.

This weekend, earlier than flying to Ohio, Jeff and I spent two days at Harper’s Ferry Nationwide Park in West Virginia, the place the borders of Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia intersect on the crossing of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. We went there on goal, to face on the web site of abolitionist John Brown’s raid on the Nationwide Armory, which started the Civil Conflict. Jeff’s household is filled with Trump-voting fundamentalist white nationalists and my household is filled with social justice activist ministers. Jeff has jumped ship from his household’s perspective, realizing that if the Civil Conflict had been taking place proper now, he’d be a Yankee and his household can be Confederates. He’s spent his complete life making an attempt to reconcile the divide, to discover a method to unify, to keep away from making one facet mistaken and the opposite facet proper.

However as we put together for turkey day, he and I notice there’s actually no method to reconcile these reverse factors of view which might be nonetheless polarizing in our nation at present. There’s just one proper facet of historical past here- the facet that fights for equal human rights for all and the facet that’s doubling down on white supremacy, who consider white colonizers are superior to the Native People they slaughtered and stole land from and the Black Africans they enslaved for their very own private revenue. The trendy day Abolitionists are nonetheless combating for justice for all People, and the trendy day Confederates are nonetheless making an attempt their damnedest to be sure that equal rights for all males, ladies, and youngsters by no means occurs.

On our method to Reagan Worldwide Airport, we stopped on the Lincoln Memorial and skim the Gettysburg Handle on the wall, as we felt our shameful American historical past course by our veins alongside the idealistic imaginative and prescient that formed our nation. Then the cognitive dissonance units in once more. We’re an entitled nation constructed upon white supremacy, Indigenous genocide and land theft, colonization and oppression, and the brutal enslavement of Black people. We’re additionally a nation that had a superb idea- that each one males are created equal.

Our nation retains pushing the sting of that good idea- to discover whether or not we as a nation can ever agree upon making a nation the place all males, ladies, and youngsters, all races, nationalities and cultures, all gender identities and sexual preferences, all able-bodied or disabled people, all non secular affiliations and beliefs, all neurotypical or neurodiverse folks, all highly effective or powerless folks, and all quick, tall, stunning, or much less stereotypical Barbie and Ken people are created equal- or not.

Harvard doctor Paul Farmer mentioned, “The concept that some lives matter much less is the basis of all that’s mistaken with the world.” Jeff and I each stand by that quote. The concept that white colonizers ever thought we had been entitled to kill and steal from the Native People within the title of Manifest Future after which rewrite historical past to faux the Native People thought it was one thing to have a good time is whole bullshit. The concept that white plantation homeowners felt entitled to dislocate and enslave Black Africans and one way or the other justify it within the title of faith is nausea-inducing to ponder. The concept many individuals in my very own nation nonetheless firmly maintain that twists their minds into believing {that a} small proportion of principally white, cis, hetero, property-owning, Christian males (and ladies) have the fitting to withhold human rights- BIPOC rights, ladies’s rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, non secular freedom rights, all of the rights- from anybody they deem “lower than” is threatening to destroy democracy in our nation.

The truth that we’re nonetheless combating over this basic distinction in our nation makes it arduous to faux to really feel grateful for the Pilgrims touchdown on Plymouth Rock this yr. It’s arduous to not get swallowed up in disgrace over the sins of my ancestors, and it’s additionally arduous to show my again on the traditions of my household, my race, and my tradition with out feeling a grave sense of loss.

And so I put together to assemble with my BIPOC sister and my queer daughter within the kitchen of my brother’s home to organize a feast. My nephew is taking part in the piano as my aunt and uncle are catching up with my sister-in-law within the different room. My accomplice Jeff is having espresso together with his white nationalist brother, looking for a method to join hearts with somebody so completely different from the remainder of my household, whereas it pours rain outdoors, knocking the final of the yellow leaves off the timber. Pleasure and melancholy trip shotgun within me, and I’m simply going to let that be okay.

I hope you’re all using the waves of no matter is arising in you throughout these distressing instances in our world. And I hope, wherever you’re, there’s love, household, grace, open-heartedness, music, good meals, and permission to really feel no matter you’re feeling, without having to faux something that isn’t your actuality.