Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

Or at least get started …

I’ve been pondering how to reconcile 54 Thanksgivings with the undeniable truths about the harm and trauma that celebration causes my Native and Indigenous friends, neighbors.

As a trauma survivor, I appreciate the distinction between bad memories and actively continued experience. It has gnawed at me so I did some research.

I am guilty of rationalizing a gathering of family over a delicious feast, leaning into sitcom spoofs poking fun at a glutenous family gathering everyone dreads. I told myself that sharing YouTube clips wasn’t just nostalgic, it was enlightening. I was pointing out hypocrisy!

The trouble is that ridiculing mid-century traditions was only one step. Doing so while tucking into that traditional meal was worse.

Decolonizing Thanksgiving is a tall order. To offset 54 years of programming, I’ll need to do this work forever.

I had a chat with the 14 yo nibling whose monotone reduction of Thanksgiving to the word “genocide” was a little frightening, while simultaneously hopeful. He likes the meal, but he would like that meal on Dec 3 or January 18. There was no sentimental or emotional connection with traditional Thanksgiving constructs. Also, he’s a vegetarian.

He can break down the true history that he learned in school. When he’s voting and preparing to shape our culture in a few years, that true history will guide him.

So I’ll follow his lead.

As for me, I’ve packed my social feeds with Native created content all month. I shopped Native online stores. I revisited episodes of the “Before We Were White” podcast.

Is it enough? No. Should I pat myself on the back? No. But sharing first steps with other white folx is important. You should not turn away.

I also told myself that I will not flaunt my sentimental attachments to this day lest I legitimize that sentimentality. I may indulge, I may not. Either way, reposting YouTube clips is no longer useful. It isn’t cute, nostalgic, or acceptable. The clip from WKRP is a hilarious sitcom segment, but the satire of the capitalist need for a Thanksgiving promotion is often lost.

Instead, I asked a friend to make a list of media with appropriate Native themes, themes to learn by. Last night I watched some PBS segments about Native American contemporary culture. Any sense of self-satisfaction was wiped away when I learned the teenager featured in one segment had died by suicide a few months after it was filmed. His name was Dillon Chance Butterfly Irvine. He was 15 and had been working to be an ‘Indian Relay’ horse rider.

The trauma and mourning are part of contemporary life, whether we acknowledge or not.

I found Native and Indigenous creators online – I bought a tee shirt that reads ‘happy colonizer day.’ I also bought some stickers for gifting. The shirt led to a conversation with a new friend who identifies as Taino. The Taino were the first Indigenous community to have contact with Christopher Columbus. I had no idea this was part of her culture.

Curiosity and respect will open cultural doors that you didn’t know existed. But once you open those doors, you have an obligation to see it through with dignity and courtesy, to appreciate rather than appropriate. To acknowledge the complicity of white people and culture in erasing-but not eliminating- Indigenous culture. And accept our shared obligation to make amends, to honor the reality that our ancestors forcefully took and occupied land that did not belong to them. And we continue to occupy it.

Decolonizing our minds, our lives is not just about denying Thanksgiving then diving into sparkle season.

How you move forward depends on what you learn from looking back …