Rethinking "Traditional" Thanksgiving: Centering Native American Voices with Events and Resources

This year as we approach Thanksgiving, we invite you to join us at our Rethinking “Traditional” Thanksgiving Storytime, and the activities we’ve set up to follow or, if you can’t make it in person, to engage with any of the resources we’ve gathered together here.

Storytime & Activities

Please join us at the Children’s Diversity & Justice Library on Saturday November 22 for an opportunity to thoughtfully engage with Thanksgiving.

At 10:30am in the CDJL we will share at least three stories written by Native authors and centering the voices of Native Nations and Indigenous Peoples to help us rethink what we’ve been told and taught about Thanksgiving. Storytime starts at 1:00pm and runs for approximately 30 minutes.

After storytime you will have the chance to participate in some activities such as exploring the  Native Land Digital interactive online map to learn about who's land we are inhabiting, decorating land acknowledgement table tents for your Thanksgiving table and creating thank you notes for anyone who has helped you.

resources

Here are some suggestions for books to read with kids, as well as resources for how to engage with the themes of Thanksgiving, and some great educational materials for us as adults!

• Do you know who the indigenous inhabitants were/are of the land where you live?  You can search your address at Native-Land.ca | Our home on native land.  Then consider printing out this Land Acknowledgement Table Tent with the info you find, and display it during your Thanksgiving meal.  You can also follow the links from the Native-Land site to learn more about the native peoples whose land you live on.

• “Keepunumuk: Weeâchumun’s Thanksgiving Story” is a fabulous new picture book that tells the story of Thanksgiving from the perspective of the Wampanoag people.  And the book’s website also has educational material including a section on “rethinking Thanksgiving” and lesson plans that could be adapted by families for exploring “The Real Thanksgiving” and “The Three sisters” for older kids and youth.  https://keepunumuk.com/

• After reading Keepunumuk, try making your own Three Sisters Salad with this version from the Cherokee Tribal Food Distribution System https://food.ebci-nsn.gov/2021/07/19/three-sisters-salad/

•  Traci Sorell, author of "We Are Grateful" and “We Are Still Here” (both in our Children’s Diversity & Justice Library collection) and enrolled Cherokee National member shares her thoughts on talking with children about Thanksgiving - https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2022/11/16/how-to-talk-to-kids-about-thanksgiving

• “Decolonizing Thanksgiving: A Toolkit for Combatting Racism in Schools” has info that’s relevant for families as well as educators, including a list of resources & books for further exploration - https://tinyurl.com/decolonizingthanksgivingkit 

• Instead of First Thanksgiving myth stories, how about sharing some books that honor Native American Heritage Month with kids? - Reading While White: What Does Thanksgiving Make You Think Of?

• American Indian Perspectives on Thanksgiving - here’s a document from the National Museum of the American Indian that is a GREAT resource that also has suggestions for younger kids as well as older kids - https://americanindian.si.edu/sites/1/files/pdf/education/thanksgiving_poster.pdf 

• This blog post from a librarian has a fascinating exploration of the history of the Pilgrims-and-Indians myth’s association with the Thanksgiving holiday (Hint: it didn’t start when you think it did…) -https://amomssparetime.blogspot.com/.../11/thanksgiving.html

Programs for Thoughtfully Engaging with Thanksgiving: November 5

Please join us at the Children’s Diversity & Justice Library on Sunday November 5 for three opportunities to thoughtfully engage with Thanksgiving.

At 1pm in the CDJL we will share at least three stories written by Native authors and / or centering the voices of Native Nations and Indigenous Peoples to help us rethink what we’ve been told and taught about Thanksgiving.

Storytime starts at 1:00pm and runs for approximately 30 minutes. After storytime you will have the chance to participate in some activities such as exploring the  Native Land Digital interactive online map to learn about who's land we are inhabiting, decorating land acknowledgement table tents for your Thanksgiving table and creating thank you notes for anyone who has helped you. Additional activities to work on or take home may include coloring pages from one of our books and a Spirit Plate activity described in Keepunumuk. Following the activities, childcare will be available until 3pm.

Starting at 2pm, adults may participate in a forum “Parenting & Educating for Justice at Thanksgiving”. How can we help children understand the real history and harm that undergirds the “traditional” celebration of Thanksgiving, while also holding onto meaningful family rituals of giving thanks? What do we do to counter misinformation about the history of the United States and the lived experience of Native Americans that our kids learn at school and from others? How do we figure out how and when to have these conversations with our kids? Join us as we ask big questions, do some learning, share some resources, and offer a space to discuss the challenges of parenting for justice at Thanksgiving (and throughout the year). Facilitated by Catherine Farmer Loya in the Lizzie Crozier Room at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church at 2pm.

Native Nations and Indigenous Peoples - New Primary Diversity Element Added

We are happy to share the news that the CDJL now includes a 13th primary diversity element - Native Nations and Indigenous Peoples!

Since our inception, we have catalogued and lent dozens of books written by and about native and indigenous people.  Adding this diversity element as a standard tag in our online catalogue and on the spine of included books means finding these books will be that much easier for browsers and borrowers.  

The Native Nations and Indigenous Peoples tag includes all our books written by and about Native Americans, First Nations, Aboriginal, Native, and Indigenous peoples worldwide.  Each book within this diversity element is also tagged with additional attributions to allow more specific searches such as Native American, First Nations, tribe and nation specific names such as Choctaw, Mohawk, Cherokee, etc., Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, Taino, etc. For example, while there are 77 books currently catalogued as Native Nations and Indigenous Peoples, there are 67 related to Native Americans.    

The CDJL’s 13 main diversity elements are used as primary means by which the collection can be searched online, and, thanks to our color-coded dot system on the spine of each book, easily identified on our shelves.  

To browse the collection online by the new Native Nations and Indigenous Peoples diversity element, head to our online catalogue home page and select the Browse By highlighted text for “Native Nations and Indigenous Peoples” or click this link https://tinyurl.com/cdjlNNIP.

Our wishlist includes many more Native Nations and Indigenous Peoples books, including many “own voices” and lesser-known titles, that we’d love to add to our collection.  To browse our wishlist for this diversity element see https://tinyurl.com/cdjlwishNNIP.  To browse our entire wishlist see https://tinyurl.com/wishlistCDJL. 

Library work is never finished.  Next on our list to include as a primary diversity element is Asian American and Pacific Islander.  We’ll begin working on sorting and properly tagging all our titles in that area after the beginning of 2022 and hope to announce our 14th primary diversity element soon!  Then, you’ll be able to more easily identify all the books in our collection written by and about people who identify as Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islanders.