“Every day that we wake up, every day that we have another opportunity to walk on this beautiful gift, which is our mother the Earth, to experience life, we give thanks.”  – Biindigegizhig Deleary

The Harvest Time

The harvest season offers a natural moment to pause, reflect, and reconnect. Across the Northern Hemisphere, autumn festivals, from Haudenosaunee harvest traditions to Samhain, Sukkot, and the Mid-Autumn Festival, celebrate gratitude, mark a time of preparation, and honor the seasonal cycles. The harvest time invites us all to pause and connect in community, reflect on our relationship with land, water, and the beings who sustain us, and reminds us that giving thanks, and preparing for winter are ancient human rhythms shared across cultures. 

A National Day of Mourning – Holding All Truths

In North America, this season carries a wide range of meanings: for some, warmth, food, and family; for others, this time is a stark representation of the continued impact of colonization, land theft, broken agreements, and systemic erasure. Many have chosen to reframe Thanksgiving as the National Day of Mourning, a movement established in 1970 by Wampanoag elder, Wamsutta Frank James, in response to being uninvited to share at an official Massacheusetts State event because his speech expressing the Indigenous side of the “Thanksgiving story” was too “inflammatory. In an article about the reframing of this holiday James’ granddaughter, Kisha James, says “we are not against giving thanks or family gatherings… we are taught to give thanks every day. But we will not give thanks for the invasion of the Pilgrims and other Europeans, nor for the ongoing colonialism and genocide that our communities continue to face.”