By Marie Gettel-Gilmartin, Fertile Ground Communications (written in 2021; updated for 2025)

Many of us grew up learning the myth of Native Americans teaching the struggling pilgrims how to survive and celebrating with a feast in 1621. But for most Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning.

Thanksgiving is in fact a holiday of colonizers.

What actually happened on Thanksgiving?

As Claire Bugos writes in the Smithsonian, “Massacres, disease, and American Indian tribal politics shaped the Pilgrim-Indian alliance at the root of the holiday.” The settlers stole land, spread disease, and exploited resources from the Wampanoag tribe. Then King Philip’s War “devastated the Wampanoags and forever shifted the balance of power in favor of European arrivals.”

Each year, Native American people gather to honor their ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples on the National Day of Mourning. Thanksgiving serves as a reminder of the unjust treatment that Native Americans have continued to receive since the 1620 Plymouth landing.

What is Oregon doing to shift the narrative about native stories and honor native peoples?

• KOIN 6 celebrates Native American Heritage Month with “KOIN Storytellers: Indigenous Life in the Northwest,” highlighting powerful stories from across our Native community. The special features the Native American Youth and Family Center’s Oscar Arana, Representative Tawna Sanchez, and Paul Lumley, along with moving segments on Elders who survived boarding schools. Thanks to the incredible work happening every day across NAYA in affordable housing, accessible childcare, Indigenous food sovereignty, youth education, and economic development. You can watch the special here.

• NAYA hosts Culture Nights each first and third Wednesday nights. They also celebrated their 22nd annual gala and auction earlier this month. Follow and donate to this great organization, which serves over 10,000 community members from nearly 400 Tribes across the country.
• The Willamette Falls Trust offers a number of great resources, including Native-owned businesses, book recommendations, events, and more.
• The Portland Art Museum is showcasing several amazing Native artists, including Marie Watt (Seneca), Dyani White Hawk (Lakota), Gail Tremblay (Onondaga and Mi’kmaq), Nan MacDonald (Metis and Algonquin), and Silas Aittauq (Inuit), to name a few.
• Willamette University is featuring “Ancestral Dialogues: Conversations in Native American Art” on permanent view in the Confederated Tribes of the Grande Ronde Gallery.
• The World Forestry Center, in cooperation with Indigenous artists and the High Desert Museum, features “Sasquatch: Ancestral Guardians,” until January 4, 2026. Indigenous peoples have long been in relationship with and shared stories about sacred forest protectors, often called Sasquatch and Bigfoot.
• The Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts shared an incredible list of suggestions, “Five Ways to Celebrate Native American Heritage Month in Reciprocity, Not Just Symbolism.”
• Multnomah County Library is offering a series of opportunities, including Native Storytime and Edible Native American Plants on 12/2,
• Our member organization, the Native Arts and Culture Foundation, is a Native-led national organization committed to mobilizing Native artists, culture bearers, communities, and leaders to influence positive social, cultural, and environmental change. The foundation offers grants and funding to support Native artists in their creative endeavors.
• The Grand Ronde tribes have an excellent collection of tribal history curriculum videos for grades kindergarten to tenth.
• Oregon universities and colleges now offer financial assistance to members of the 574 federally recognized Tribes.
• The Oregon Department of Education rolled out a “Tribal History/Shared History” curriculum in 2020. Oregon schools now have historically accurate and culturally inclusive lessons about Native Americans. Oregon’s nine Tribes collaborated on this curriculum to banish stereotypes, myths, and inaccuracies.

What can we do in our organizations or at home to decolonize Thanksgiving?

• Think about what you eat for Thanksgiving dinner. How did these foods come to you? You can buy American Indian foods from local Tribes and businesses.
• Volunteer your services on Thursday, 11/27 or Sunday, 11/30 by helping out at Unthanksgiving events. Since 2021, NAYA has gathered community on the fourth Thursday in November, National Day of Mourning according to our Wampanoag relatives, to shift the narrative from a misleading colonial holiday toward one of mourning genocide and celebrating Indigenous survival. This year, they invite volunteers to join in honoring the land, uplifting Indigenous food sovereignty, and supporting the garden that nourishes our community year-round. Come lend a hand, learn, and stand in solidarity with Native peoples. Registration required.

• Visit the Indigenous Marketplace at SE Uplift on 11/28 and 29 and support Native artists and craftspeople.

• Visit Blackfish Gallery’s collaboration with NAYA, a holiday market on December 6.

• Buy from Oregon’s Native artists and performers, as we shared in this article from 2022.
• Visit the “We Are the Land” public art installation in Portland, a collaboration between the City of Portland and indigena (an Indigenous storytelling cooperative), the City Arts Program, Regional Arts and Culture Council, Multnomah County, and Metro.
• Learn which Tribes are native to Oregon.
• Donate to and follow local Native American organizations, such as the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, the  Native American Youth and Family Center, and Wisdom of the Elders.
• Visit Native-owned farms and restaurants around the state and buy from Native-owned businesses.
• Plan an Oregon vacation to celebrate Indigenous Oregon by visiting Travel Oregon’s website.
• Listen to perspectives on thanksgiving from Wampanoag youth or watch a brilliant Native American film.
• Unlearn myths with your kids. The Portland Public Schools website has some excellent resources. Read books about Thanksgiving by indigenous authors, such as Catherine O’Neill Grace’s 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving and Joseph Bruchac’s Squanto’s Journey: The Story of the First Thanksgiving. Or use this great hands-on activity from Teaching Tolerance. Get adult book suggestions from firstnations.org.
• Support contemporary Indigenous struggles by learning about the #LandBack movement and current land struggles faced by the Mashpee Wampanoag people. The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture has a virtual resource pack on its Honor Native Land page.
• Find out what your community is doing to support the Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women’s crisis.
• Follow the work of indigenous-led organizations such as Native American Rights Fund, Illuminatives, National Congress of American Indians, and the American Indian College Fund...or organizations here in Oregon.

Arts and culture are two of the best ways to honor Native Americans and decolonize Thanksgiving, as we’re reminded by Joy Harjo, U.S. Poet Laureate and board chair of the Native Arts and Culture Foundation:

“We’ve come to a point in the world of great challenge, but also great opportunity, in which to revise and revitalize our communities. How do we do that? It always comes back to the arts, because arts revitalize, they tell us who we are, they tell us where we’re going and where we’ve been. Art makes connections on a deep soul level; it connects us in a way beyond words.”
-Joy Harjo

We can still be thankful while acknowledging the harm done to Native peoples by this holiday. To decolonize Thanksgiving, we need to examine our history to begin the healing process.

The Coalition acknowledges the many Tribes and bands who call Oregon their ancestral territory, including: Burns Paiute; Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw; Confederated Tribes of Cow Creek Lower Band of Umpqua; Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde; Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians; Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs; Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation; Coquille Tribe; and Klamath Tribes. We honor the ongoing relationship between the land, plants, animals and people indigenous to this place we now call Oregon. We recognize the continued sovereignty of the nine federally recognized Tribes who have ties to this place and thank them for continuing to teach us how we might all be here together.

The post Decolonizing Thanksgiving in Oregon 2025 appeared first on Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon.

By Marie Gettel-Gilmartin, Fertile Ground Communications (written in 2021; updated for 2024)

Many of us grew up learning the myth of Native Americans teaching the struggling pilgrims how to survive and celebrating with a feast in 1621. But for most Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning.

Thanksgiving is in fact a holiday of colonizers.

What actually happened on Thanksgiving?

As Claire Bugos writes in the Smithsonian, “Massacres, disease, and American Indian tribal politics shaped the Pilgrim-Indian alliance at the root of the holiday.” The settlers stole land, spread disease, and exploited resources from the Wampanoag tribe. Then King Philip’s War “devastated the Wampanoags and forever shifted the balance of power in favor of European arrivals.”

Each year, Native American people gather to honor their ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples on the National Day of Mourning. Thanksgiving serves as a reminder of the unjust treatment that Native Americans have continued to receive since the 1620 Plymouth landing.

What is Oregon doing to shift the narrative about native stories and honor native peoples?

• The Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA)  celebrated Culture Night on Wednesday, November 20, where families and community members came together to participate in beading, singing, crafting, intertribal drumming, and dancing.
• Our member organization, the Native Arts and Culture Foundation, is a Native-led national organization committed to mobilizing Native artists, culture bearers, communities, and leaders to influence positive social, cultural, and environmental change. The foundation offers grants and funding to support Native artists in their creative endeavors.
• The Five Oaks Museum in Beaverton centers descendant communities in their storytelling. Visit the museum to learn about the Kalapuya Tribe and Kalapuyan land thanks to guest curator Steph Littlebird Fogel and other Native American experts.
• Cowlitz Tribal member Suzanne Donaldson and CEO of Donaldson Consulting LLC is sharing compelling facts, challenging stereotypes, and shedding light on important issues on LinkedIn each day during November, Native American Heritage Month.
• The Grand Ronde tribes have an excellent collection of tribal history curriculum videos for grades kindergarten to tenth.
• Oregon universities and colleges now offer financial assistance to members of the 574 federally recognized Tribes.
• The Oregon Department of Education rolled out a “Tribal History/Shared History” curriculum in 2020. Oregon schools now have historically accurate and culturally inclusive lessons about Native Americans. Oregon’s nine Tribes collaborated on this curriculum to banish stereotypes, myths, and inaccuracies.
• The Oregon Food Bank honors the National Day of Mourning, acknowledging that Native Americans experience food insecurity at a staggeringly high rate and some of the most anti-Native policies happened in Oregon.
• The University of Oregon’s Native American Student Union hosted “Thanks But No Thanks-giving: Decolonizing an American Holiday” in 2020 and 2021, where they discussed ways to show gratitude while decolonizing the holiday.

What can we do in our organizations or at home to decolonize Thanksgiving?

• Think about what you eatfor Thanksgiving dinner. How did these foods come to you? You can buy American Indian foods from local tribes and businesses.
• Visit the Native Arts and Culture Foundation on Friday, November 22 or Saturday, November 23 to attend “Citizen Fellow: Art as Archive and Memory,” a sampling of the past 15 years of the foundation’s work and perspectives.
• View the Five Oaks Museum‘s current exhibit, Replenish the Root: Six Centuries of Gathering Under the Oaks, which explores the Oregon white oak savanna ecosystem that once flourished in the Tualatin Valley under Kalapuyan stewardship. They offer free educator tours.
• Stand with the Portland Native community by attending Unthanksgiving events with NAYA at Wapato Island Farm on November 23 and the NAYA Garden on November 28. Register in advance.
• Attend the Grand Ronde Restoration’s public powwow on November 23. The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde will celebrate the 41st anniversary of the Grand Ronde Restoration Act, which in 1983 restored the tribe’s federal recognition. Grand entry will be at 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. for the powwow, which will take place at Spirit Mountain Casino.

  
  

• Support Indigenous artists and entrepreneurs at the Indigenous Marketplace in downtown Portland from November 15-December 31 or in Oregon City on November 23-24; the Native American Youth and Family Center’s Winter Native-Made Marketplace on Dec. 14-15 at Lloyd Center; or Eugene Native American Arts & Crafts Makers on December 1, 14, or 15.
  
  
• Take your children to Native Story Hour on November 27 at the Capitol Hill Library in Southwest Portland. The event will feature songs and books from Native cultures, and is open to people of all ages. The event is supported by the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.
• Buy from Oregon’s Native artists and performers, as we shared in this article from 2022.
• Visit the “We Are the Land” public art installation in Portland, a collaboration between the City of Portland and indigena (an Indigenous storytelling cooperative), the City Arts Program, Regional Arts and Culture Council, Multnomah County, and Metro.
• Learn which Tribes are native to Oregon.
• Donate to and follow local Native American organizations, such as the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, the  Native American Youth and Family Center, and Wisdom of the Elders.
• Visit Native-owned farms and restaurants around the state and buy from Native-owned businesses.
• Plan an Oregon vacation to celebrate Indigenous Oregon by visiting Travel Oregon’s website.
• Listen to perspectives on thanksgiving from Wampanoag youth or watch a brilliant Native American film.
• View the Oregon Historical Society’s “Oregon is Indian Country” traveling exhibit at Pacific University until December 1, 2024, before it’s moved from circulation.
• Unlearn myths with your kids. The Portland Public Schools website has some excellent resources. Read books about Thanksgiving by indigenous authors, such as Catherine O’Neill Grace’s 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving and Joseph Bruchac’s Squanto’s Journey: The Story of the First Thanksgiving. Or use this great hands-on activity from Teaching Tolerance. Get adult book suggestions from firstnations.org.
• Support contemporary Indigenous struggles by learning about the #LandBack movement and current land struggles faced by the Mashpee Wampanoag people. The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture has a virtual resource pack on its Honor Native Land page.
• Find out what your community is doing to support the Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women’s crisis.
• Follow the work of indigenous-led organizations such as Native American Rights Fund, Illuminatives, National Congress of American Indians, and the American Indian College Fund...or organizations here in Oregon.

Arts and culture are two of the best ways to honor Native Americans and decolonize Thanksgiving, as we’re reminded by Joy Harjo, U.S. Poet Laureate and board chair of the Native Arts and Culture Foundation:

“We’ve come to a point in the world of great challenge, but also great opportunity, in which to revise and revitalize our communities. How do we do that? It always comes back to the arts, because arts revitalize, they tell us who we are, they tell us where we’re going and where we’ve been. Art makes connections on a deep soul level; it connects us in a way beyond words.”
-Joy Harjo

We can still be thankful while acknowledging the harm done to Native peoples by this holiday. To decolonize Thanksgiving, we need to examine our history to begin the healing process.

The Coalition acknowledges the many Tribes and bands who call Oregon their ancestral territory, including: Burns Paiute; Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw; Confederated Tribes of Cow Creek Lower Band of Umpqua; Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde; Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians; Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs; Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation; Coquille Tribe; and Klamath Tribes. We honor the ongoing relationship between the land, plants, animals and people indigenous to this place we now call Oregon. We recognize the continued sovereignty of the nine federally recognized Tribes who have ties to this place and thank them for continuing to teach us how we might all be here together.

The post Decolonizing Thanksgiving in Oregon 2024 appeared first on Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon.

By Marie Gettel-Gilmartin, Fertile Ground Communications (written in 2021; updated for 2023 with items in blue text)

Many of us grew up learning the myth of Native Americans teaching the struggling pilgrims how to survive and celebrating with a feast in 1621. But for most Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning.

Thanksgiving is in fact a holiday of colonizers.

What actually happened on Thanksgiving?

As Claire Bugos writes in the Smithsonian, “Massacres, disease, and American Indian tribal politics shaped the Pilgrim-Indian alliance at the root of the holiday.” The settlers stole land, spread disease, and exploited resources from the Wampanoag tribe. Then King Philip’s War “devastated the Wampanoags and forever shifted the balance of power in favor of European arrivals.”

Each year, Native American people gather to honor their ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples on the National Day of Mourning. Thanksgiving serves as a reminder of the unjust treatment that Native Americans have continued to receive since the 1620 Plymouth landing.

What is Oregon doing to shift the narrative about native stories and honor native peoples?

• The Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA)  and the Native community celebrate a worldwide social event, Rock Your Mocs, by wearing moccasins to unite, celebrate tribal individuality, and honor ancestors and indigenous peoples worldwide (Nov. 12-18 this year). Search #ROCKYOURMOCS to check out the collection of photos.
• Our member organization, the Native Arts and Culture Foundation, is a Native-led national organization committed to mobilizing Native artists, culture bearers, communities, and leaders to influence positive social, cultural, and environmental change. The foundation has provided $14 million in 594 grants to 394 Native artists and organizations in 34 different states and the District of Columbia. Their center opens monthly for a tour, where you can connect with their community of Native makers and cultural innovators.
• The recently rebranded and reopened Five Oaks Museum in Beaverton is now centering descendant communities in all storytelling work. Visit the museum to learn about the Kalapuya Tribe and Kalapuyan land thanks to guest curator Steph Littlebird Fogel and other Native American experts. 
• The Grand Ronde tribes have an excellent collection of tribal history curriculum videos for grades kindergarten to tenth.
• Oregon universities and colleges now offer financial assistance to members of the 574 federally recognized Tribes.
• The Oregon Department of Education rolled out a “Tribal History/Shared History” curriculum in 2020. Oregon schools now have historically accurate and culturally inclusive lessons about Native Americans. Oregon’s nine Tribes collaborated on this curriculum to banish stereotypes, myths, and inaccuracies.
• The Oregon Food Bank honors the National Day of Mourning, acknowledging that Native Americans experience food insecurity at a staggeringly high rate and some of the most anti-Native policies happened in Oregon.
• The University of Oregon’s Native American Student Union hosted “Thanks But No Thanks-giving: Decolonizing an American Holiday” in 2020 and 2021, where they discussed ways to show gratitude while decolonizing the holiday.

What can we do in our organizations or at home to decolonize Thanksgiving?

• Think about what you eat for Thanksgiving dinner. How did these foods come to you? You can buy American Indian foods from local tribes and businesses.
• Stand with the Portland Native community by attending Unthanksgiving gardening events on November 23-25. UnThanksgiving has expanded to three organizations this year: NAYA Community Garden, Prismid Sanctuary, and Wapato Island Farm. Wear attire appropriate for the weather and for gardening, bring gloves, a water bottle or thermos to keep you hydrated, and tools. Registration is required and can be found here: https://forms.gle/5kn8yW4AtWFSaGVt8 
• Support Indigenous artists and entrepreneurs at the Indigenous Marketplace events on Nov. 24-26 or Dec. 6-8 and the Native American Youth and Family Center’s Winter Native-Made Marketplace on Dec.  9-10 at Lloyd Center.
• Buy from Oregon’s Native artists and performers, as we shared in this article from 2022.
• Visit the “We Are the Land” public art installation in Portland, a collaboration between the City of Portland and indigena (an Indigenous storytelling cooperative), the City Arts Program, Regional Arts and Culture Council, Multnomah County, and Metro.
• Learn which Tribes are native to Oregon.
• Donate to and follow local Native American organizations, such as the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, the  Native American Youth and Family Center, and Wisdom of the Elders.
• Visit Native-owned farms and restaurants around the state and buy from Native-owned businesses.
• Plan an Oregon vacation to celebrate Indigenous Oregon by visiting Travel Oregon’s website.
• Listen to perspectives on thanksgiving from Wampanoag youth or watch a brilliant Native American film.
• Rent the Oregon Historical Society’s “Oregon is Indian Country” traveling exhibit for free through 2023. It’s displayed in the City of Eugene from Nov. 27-Dec. 3, 2023.
• Unlearn myths with your kids. The Portland Public Schools website has some excellent resources. Read books about Thanksgiving by indigenous authors, such as Catherine O’Neill Grace’s 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving and Joseph Bruchac’s Squanto’s Journey: The Story of the First Thanksgiving. Or use this great hands-on activity from Teaching Tolerance. Get adult book suggestions from firstnations.org.
• Support contemporary Indigenous struggles by learning about the #LandBack movement and current land struggles faced by the Mashpee Wampanoag people. The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture has a virtual resource pack on its Honor Native Land page.
• Find out what your community is doing to support the Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women’s crisis.
• Follow the work of indigenous-led organizations such as Native American Rights Fund, Illuminatives, National Congress of American Indians, and the American Indian College Fund...or organizations here in Oregon.

Arts and culture are two of the best ways to honor Native Americans and decolonize Thanksgiving, as we’re reminded by Joy Harjo, U.S. Poet Laureate and board chair of the Native Arts and Culture Foundation:

“We’ve come to a point in the world of great challenge, but also great opportunity, in which to revise and revitalize our communities. How do we do that? It always comes back to the arts, because arts revitalize, they tell us who we are, they tell us where we’re going and where we’ve been. Art makes connections on a deep soul level; it connects us in a way beyond words.”  -Joy Harjo

We can still be thankful while acknowledging the harm done to Native peoples by this holiday. To decolonize Thanksgiving, we need to examine our history to begin the healing process.

The Coalition acknowledges the many Tribes and bands who call Oregon their ancestral territory, including: Burns Paiute; Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw; Confederated Tribes of Cow Creek Lower Band of Umpqua; Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde; Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians; Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs; Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation; Coquille Tribe; and Klamath Tribes. We honor the ongoing relationship between the land, plants, animals and people indigenous to this place we now call Oregon. We recognize the continued sovereignty of the nine federally recognized Tribes who have ties to this place and thank them for continuing to teach us how we might all be here together.

The post Decolonizing Thanksgiving in Oregon appeared first on Cultural Advocacy Coalition of Oregon.