An unlikely Thanksgiving story

Beneath the joyous celebration of Thanksgiving lies a fraught history. This year, the Monitor turned to Canada for lessons in honoring gratitude without obscuring the reality of the past.

Thanksgiving is a big deal around the Monitor. For one day, public conversation aligns with some of the values that we hold dearest – gratitude, generosity, community, family.

Yet in recent years, the U.S. discourse around the annual feast has taken a more contentious tone, as concerns long expressed by Native American communities have found footing in more mainstream conversations. Beneath this joyous and loving celebration lies a fraught history. Many Indigenous communities observe the fourth Thursday of each November with a day of mourning for the widespread killing of their ancestors at the hands of European colonists. More recently, some have gone so far as to rename it Unthanksgiving Day.

As the holiday season approached, Monitor editors considered addressing this latest rift in the culture wars head-on. It’s the kind of story that we do well. And yet, in a year marked by intense division, it didn’t feel quite right to lean into the controversy.

It is true that the narrative of the “first Thanksgiving” that many Americans were taught is rife with inaccuracies and stereotypes. But it is also true that, however flawed its origin story, this day has come to represent some truly wonderful things. What story could we tell, we wondered, that would amplify the gracious tone of the holiday without stoking the hurt felt around its painful history?

Our first thought was to explore the idea of gratitude from an Indigenous perspective.

I brought the idea to the two writers at the Monitor most focused on Indigenous issues: Henry Gass and Sara Miller Llana. Together, Sara and Henry have carved out a “borderless beat,” covering Native American and First Nations communities. Did they think this idea would be feasible? Would Indigenous communities even want to participate in a story timed around Thanksgiving? Might they find it insulting to be asked?

Henry and Sara first cautioned that there is no singular Indigenous perspective. There are 574 Native American tribes and Alaska Native entities in the United States and 630 First Nations communities in Canada. Each one has its own history, values, and cultural narratives. So would they find the timing of our inquiry around Thanksgiving objectionable? There could be no single answer to that question. Some might welcome the opportunity to help shape a Thanksgiving story. But others could be offended.

Fair enough.

The two writers looked back at their reporting on both sides of the border. By focusing on gratitude, would we even be asking the right question? they asked. If we want to offer an Indigenous perspective, should we be setting the storyline ourselves?

In the end, we found the cover story that anchors the Thanksgiving issue of the Monitor Weekly. It turned out not to be an American story at all, though it carries many hallmarks of the Thanksgiving story told in the United States. I’ll let you discover how that story unfolds. But for me, it is a reminder that the goodness we honor on Thanksgiving Day need not be a casualty of historical reckoning. In fact, it doesn’t need to be tied to any single day. We can keep it with us all year long.