Happy Holidays, everyone! As the days continue to grow shorter and colder, we here at FRESH are taking the time to be thankful for what we have, map out ways that we can continue to help our community, and educate ourselves about the many facets and issues that surround this time of year. For some people, this is the season of feasting, family, pageantry, and joy, but for many others, Thanksgiving Day, the third Thursday in November, has a different meaning altogether.

“The holiday arrives in the midst of a national struggle over racial justice, and a pandemic that has landed with particular force on marginalized communities of color. The crises have fueled an intense re-examination of the roots of persistent inequities in American life.

This Thanksgiving also comes on the heels of an election in which 110 American Indian and Alaska Native candidates ran for office, according to the National Congress of American Indians, and on the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower voyage.
Winona LaDuke, the Native American activist and writer who ran for vice president in 1996 and 2000 as Ralph Nader’s running mate, believes that the country is primed to re-envision Thanksgiving as an occasion to come to terms with the cruelty Native Americans have experienced throughout history.

Work to reverse this historical amnesia has spanned decades. The National Day of Mourning dates back to 1970, established on Thanksgiving by activists in New England to recognize the suffering of Native Americans. Fourteen states and the District of Columbia now celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead of Columbus Day, recasting a holiday that honored an explorer who presided over the enslaving and killing of Indigenous people.” 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/dining/thanksgiving-native-americans.html

“It was the Wampanoag in 1621 who helped the first wave of Puritans arriving on our shores, showing them how to plant crops, forage for wild foods, and basically survive. The first official mention of a ‘Thanksgiving’ celebration occurs in 1637, after the colonists brutally massacre an entire Pequot village, then subsequently celebrate their barbaric victory. Years later, President Washington first tried to start a holiday of Thanksgiving in 1789, but this has nothing to do with ‘Indians and settlers, it’s intended to be a public day of ‘thanksgiving and prayer.’

The thing is, we do not need the poisonous ‘pilgrims and Indians’ narrative. We do not need that illusion of past unity to actually unite people today. Instead, we can focus simply on values that apply to everybody: togetherness, generosity and gratitude.

Most of our Thanksgiving recipes are made with indigenous foods: turkey, corn, beans, pumpkins, maple, wild rice and the like. We should embrace this. No matter where you are in North America, you are on indigenous land. And so on this holiday, and any day really, I urge people to explore a deeper connection to what are called ‘American’ foods by understanding true Native-American histories, and begin using what grows naturally around us, and to support Native-American growers. There is no need to make Thanksgiving about a false past. It is so much better when it celebrates the beauty of the present.”

Sean Sherman, Time, Nov 11, 2019

We’re making strides, but we still have a long way to go. Thank you, friends, for your encouragement and support.

Here's how it works:

We have 144 virtual envelopes numbered 1 to 144. If we get $1 from envelope #1, $2 from envelope #2, and so on, when all the envelopes are filled we will have raised a little over $10,000!