This month, join all of us at Morningside Center to learn together in gratitude for all that Indigenous Peoples from the lands of the Eagle and the Condor provide. We urge you to consider these fantastic lessons about Native peoples FROM Native peoples, and enrich your libraries (home and school!) with beautiful books from First Nations authors AND publishers!
That Native | Indigenous Peoples’ Heritage Month is honored in the same month as we celebrate Thanksgiving makes many of us here in the United States feel, to say the least, conflicted. It is now well known that the pilgrims’ ‘First Thanksgiving’ story many of us were told in school (I’m the tail-end of Gen X) is almost entirely myth if not worse, and while many schools observe a more realistic version of the past, there certainly are school children in this land who are still told this wildly one-sided/falsified story.
My own point of view is inherently conflicted as well. Non-Native myself, and raised by an Episcopal priest, I was continually reminded that Thanksgiving has long existed in the Anglican prayerbook—well before 1492. And the Onieda members of our church in the 1990s certainly celebrated the day, bringing their own dishes and prayers to the services and potlaches.
It was in those days that, at the age of 11 or 12, I started reading Native literature. I went on to serve in the AmeriCorps on the Blackfoot Reservation in Montana as an after-school counselor and volunteer service member. I loved the literature and cultures so much that I applied to and was accepted as a MA/ PhD student in American Indian Literature only a few years later.
Now, my two godchildren are Oglala Lakota and Cheyenne. My godson is a lawyer of Indian Law (from American University!) and practicing in the Twin Cities where Indigenous chefs, foodways, restaurants and recipe books are exploding. My goddaughter lives on the Cheyenne River Reservation with her family, where her partner is a youth-serving Art Director at a major community center and she is an artist, jewelry maker and singer. My takoja (grandchildren) speak as much Lakota as English and reject any other name for me but Unçi (grandmother); the first words out of my two-year-old granddaughter’s mouth when we arrived this summer and she laid eyes on my son were, “Lekshi, play!” (uncle).
I owe so very much of my life, my sense of cosmos, my path; an enriched sense of the world, myself, how to be a mother and live my entire life to Native and First Nations Peoples (not to mention my earring collection). So, it’s entirely natural that this month is for me—a non-Native woman—one of continued learning and gratitude. And I’m finally in an incredibly authentic home!
We at Morningside owe so much of our practice and ethos to Native peoples. It was Kay Pranis, also in the Twin Cities, who learned about Circles from Indigenous Peoples she worked closely with over decades. And it is her work that foregrounds our own Circles (more Circles 1 and 2); and so much more. Our practices are founded in notions of community, equity, inclusion and balance that originate with Indigenous cultures.
As the famous quote goes:
“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."
- Lilla Watson (Murri, Gangulu) visual artist, activist and academic
So, this month, join all of us at Morningside Center to learn together in gratitude for all that Indigenous Peoples from the lands of the Eagle and the Condor provide. We urge you to consider these fantastic lessons about Native peoples FROM Native peoples, and enrich your libraries (home and school!) with beautiful books from First Nations authors AND publishers!
Buy Native books, Strong Nations Publishing, Indigenous owned/ operated
Dance in a Buffalo Skull by Zitkala Ša (Yankton Dakota), illustrated by S.D. Nelson (Standing Rock Sioux)
Star Boy by Paul Goble (non-Native and well-loved by many)
Buffalo Woman by Paul Goble
Black Elk’s Vision by S.D. Nelson (Standing Rock Sioux)
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (Spokane)
Fire Keeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley (Chippewa/ Ojibwe)
We celebrate this Native Heritage Month with you and all our brothers and sisters with joy and honor!
Mitakuye Oyasin!
All My Relations (Lakota)