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7 Ways to Be An Ally to Native Peoples This Thanksgiving

In the United States, so much of what Americans are thankful for — our families, homes, the foods we enjoy — are the products of ongoing colonization. We might feel grateful for the place we grew up, but that place exists on stolen land. Coming together with family can be challenging, as we all have different ideas of what “America” is. Yet, if there’s one thing many folks can agree on, it’s that in the history of this country, Native people were wronged.

With the arrival of European settlers, an estimated 90% of the millions of Indigenous peoples — a number debated to be between 20 and 100 million — died. It wasn’t just from disease: The colonizing settlers enacted genocide of Indigenous peoples through starvation, torture, and massacres. It may be true that the “first Thanksgiving” was a peaceful gathering of Pilgrims and Wampanoag people, who together celebrated the Pilgrims’ first harvest in 1621. But given the massive genocide their ancestors experienced at the hands of European colonizers, it’s hard for Indigenous folks to see this holiday as anything other than a national day of mourning.

“What’s wrong with Thanksgiving is not so much the celebration as it is the American mythology that surrounds it,” Alaina Comeaux, an Ishak activist who works to decolonize history, tells Teen Vogue. “It allows for a certain whitewashed fantasy that erases the devastating impacts of colonization that persist to this day.”

Native peoples continue to fight for their lands and sovereignty while facing exceptional rates of poverty, suicide, and sexual violence, so it’s way past time for more Americans to acknowledge the difficult truths at the heart of Thanksgiving. If you’d like to do your part to help rewrite the story at your gathering this year, here are some ways you can start working toward a more just future.

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