I know that last year when I wrote on this topic, some found it depressing. Here are two reasons I will be highlighting some words of Native People’s this week.

1. Thanksgiving is more or less the only time of year that any attention on a national level is given to the history of this country as it involves Native People. It is the one day that many are evening considering that there where people on this land when the pilgrim’s arrived, and it is one opportunity to prick a hole in the pretty packaged history we’ve created for ourselves.
2. As a Christian, I am compelled more and more that Jesus pointed to the poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden and outcast as the true leaders of his kingdom, the ones who receive blessing, the ones to whom the kingdom belongs. In an effort to follow Christ, I want to give opportunity to silence my voice, and lift up others

The National Day of Mourning takes place on the same day we celebrate Thanksgiving. It is a protest by Native People’s to mourn the loss of their land and the injustices that have continued since that time. With no real solution on the horizon it’s been asked, “When will the protest end?”

According to a speech by Moonanum James, Co-Leader of United American Indians of New England at the 29th National Day of Mourning, November 26, 1998:

Some ask us: Will you ever stop protesting? Some day we will stop protesting: We will stop protesting when the merchants of Plymouth are no longer making millions of dollars off the blood of our slaughtered ancestors. We will stop protesting when we can act as sovereign nations on our own land without the interference of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and what Sitting Bull called the “favorite ration chiefs.” When corporations stop polluting our mother, the earth. When racism has been eradicated. When the oppression of Two-Spirited people is a thing of the past. We will stop protesting when homeless people have homes and no child goes to bed hungry. When police brutality no longer exists in communities of color. We will stop protesting when Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu Jamal and the Puerto Rican independentistas and all the political prisoners are free. Until then, the struggle will continue.