Navigating Gratitude in Times of Struggle

Embracing Indigenous Solidarity and Meaningful Gratitude Practices this Thanksgiving

Image by Shane Rounce on Unsplash.

Greetings Livable Futures community!

This week we have the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S. of course. It is both a time of mourning and a time of gratitude for the gifts of the earth, the harvest. Holding these sensations at the same time and walking a path of integrity is an ongoing question and practice for me.

I’ve been wrestling with whether to write a post this week and unsure that there is more for me to say than what has already been said. But given the core practices of Livable Futures—arriving and turning toward what is, actively centering and re-centering around marginalized voices and nuanced perspectives, softening into intention and action—I am called in again to listen and share and be in community with you all. 

Savoring our gifts and rejoicing in the harvest is perhaps extra challenging this year amidst the wars in Israel-Gaza and Ukraine and so much suffering. As I’ve been reflecting on this and seeking sustaining practices, I found this post on the bravery of opening to suffering and how to do so without becoming overwhelmed. It is gentle and helpful. I am working with this practice as part of the climate work and hope to share more in the coming weeks as I prepare new material for the Climate Banshee social media installations during the UN Climate talks COP28.

For now, I am arriving into this moment and savoring the quiet of late autumn. It is still green but the landscape is also full of warm browns and a few last bursts of red and yellow as the eastern woodland trees settle in for winter. Inspired by foraging luminary and Columbus neighbor Alexis Nikole Nelson @blackforager we decided not to rake this year. The mottled blanket of old oak leaves is dampening the sound around our house and below this I can sense the busy microbial life at work. It makes me smile and brings a feeling of warmth of appreciation.

Engaging in Reflection and Action for Collective Liberation

Today I am re-reading Patty Krawec’s Becoming Kin (regular readers of the newsletter will know this is a favorite of mine) and particularly her beautiful interlude chapter, The Flood, in which she summarizes the work of the first part of the book, and then points the way forward into re-building, re-connecting, and deepening connection and relationship. Krawec writes:

“We have noticed and acknowledged. We have considered promises and places. We have begun challenging the things we hear and about how to begin re-placing those who are not seen…And now we turn to the process of rebuilding….We turn to the work of becoming kin to the land and to each other, understanding our responsibilities. Because for indigenous peoples, kinship means responsibilities…now we begin to return to ourselves.”

I appreciate her direct and poetic articulation of the harms, “colonization washed over the Western Hemisphere like a flood, engulfing and overwhelming it…Like Muskrat, we dove through those waters, looking for something with which we could rebuild…We have surfaced, alive, out of breath, perhaps, but still breathing. And the harms of colonization are not something that just happened, they are not acts of nature or even divine judgment. Despite what many people are desperate to believe, they are not the unintended consequences of misguided but otherwise good intentions.” 

I am grateful for the many practices and visions she provides along with reckoning to help us all imagine and co-create better futures.

“The world is alive in ways we don’t understand. The heavens pour out praise, and the trees clap with joy. And with a song and a handful of mud, we can make this world anew. We can walk together on a good path is green and beautiful and together we can light the eighth and final fire: an eternal fire of peace, love, and kinship.”

Rethinking Thanksgiving: Embracing Indigenous Solidarity and Reflection

How do we approach this holiday then? For some, the best thing is to reject it completely. Others mark it as a day of mourning. Still others seek to re-invent it or wrestle with it and use it as a day of learning and reflection. Your approach will depend on your responsibilities and positions and privileges.

To the many indigenous members of this community, I want to express my deepest respect, gratitude, and sorrow at centuries of violence and inequity and extend my hope and love on this journey. May you find support and rest, joy and acknowledgement today and in the days ahead.

For those marking the holiday, if you don’t have a resource already and want to do more reflecting, learning, and feeling into action on indigenous solidarity as part of your Thanksgiving practice or another sacred moment of rest, gratitude, grieving, and mourning that you are marking, I recommend the work of Showing Up For Racial Justice. They write: 

“Through the leadership of Indigenous people, so many of us have come into an understanding of the violent history of Thanksgiving and have changed our relationship with the holiday. In that spirit, join SURJ, other movement organizations, and Indigenous leaders to deepen your commitment to and understanding of present-day Indigenous struggles.” 

They offer a Rethinking Thanksgiving toolkit. Here are a few reflection questions from the toolkit that can support meaningful conversations in your communities:

 Where did you learn the history of Thanksgiving?

How does it feel to realize that many of the things you learned about Thanksgiving are myths?

Whose ancestral lands are you living on that are now occupied by the US? Look it up here: https://native-land.ca/

What do you know about where your people came from and how they came to the land where you/they live currently?

My family and I will be talking through these and other questions this week and also watching the native-led documentary Gather (on Netflix!), “an intimate portrait of the growing movement amongst Native Americans to reclaim their spiritual, political, and cultural identities through food sovereignty while battling the trauma of centuries of genocide.” There are some wonderful stories on their website as well. 

Recommended Resources for Deeper Understanding

I have several new books by indigenous artists that I was delighted to find at The Center for Art, Research, and Alliances in NYC last week and I look forward to sharing about those in future posts but for today, here are a few organizations to uplift and support this week and great resources for learning and offering donations, described in their own words:

Catalyst Dance and choreographer Emily B. Johnson, an artist who makes body-based work. Catalyst’s tenet is Land Back. Everything we do is for this purpose. We make dances and performance gatherings, but really we are re-worlding. We structure our work with the following four branches: Branch of Making, Branch of Action Speculative Architecture of the Overflow, Branch of Scholarship, and Branch of Knowledge. Emily B. Johnson says, “I view our bodies as everything. Our bodies are culture, history, present and future, all at once. Out of respect for, and trust in our bodies and collective memories, I give equal weight to story and image, to movement and stillness, to what I imagine and to what I do not know.”

LANDBACK is a movement that has existed for generations with a long legacy of organizing and sacrifice to get Indigenous Lands back into Indigenous hands. Currently, there are LANDBACK battles being fought all across Turtle Island, to the north and the South. As NDN Collective, we are stepping into this legacy with the launch of a LANDBACK Campaign as a mechanism to connect, coordinate, resource and amplify this movement and the communities that are fighting for LANDBACK. The closure of Mount Rushmore, return of that land and all public lands in the Black Hills, South Dakota is our cornerstone battle, from which we will build out this campaign. Read the manifesto.

Seeding Sovereignty is a multi-lens collective that works to radicalize and disrupt colonized spaces through land, body, and food sovereignty work, community building, and cultural preservation. By investing in Indigenous folks and communities of the global majority, we cross the threshold of liberation together.

Catalyst Project helps to build powerful multiracial movements that can win collective liberation. In the service of this vision, we organize, train, and mentor white people to take collective action to end racism, war, and empire, and to support efforts to build power in working-class communities of color. 

Hawaiʻi Peace and Justice (HPJ) works to promote peace, social justice, and a (life, sovereignty, rising, breath) in Hawaiʻi through community organizing, popular education, art, and nonviolent direct action as tools for social change. Our collective vision is what international feminists call “genuine security- centering health and well-being through policies and actions that meaningfully redistribute funds away from industries of violence and towards that which feeds and enriches ourselves, our neighbors, and our broader communities.

The families of TONATIERRA are proactive in developing and implementing decolonization strategies that are coherent with our community's cultural identity and responsibilities, allowing us to capture and incorporate the internal and external strength of our collective movement for environmental justice and self-determination as Indigenous Peoples at the local, regional, continental and global levels. Our base community is the surviving Nations, families, communities, barrios, clans, and Pueblos of the Uto-Aztecan family of Indigenous Peoples. 

Eastern Woodlands Rematriation: Indigenous Womxn Restoring Spiritual Foundations Through Sustainable Food And Economic SystemsEastern Woodlands Rematriation (EWR) is a grassroots collective led entirely by indigenous two-spirits, indigequeer, womxn and tribal families of what is now known as New England. The land and its kin have rights in a cyclical evolution grounded in our respective cosmovisions/creation stories and the struggles of our ancestors. In this framework of care and reciprocity, power then becomes transformative.

I hope you will find these resources, sites of connection, and pathways into solidarity and action inspiring and share others that you would like to uplift.

Recognizing the Power of Small Acts of Appreciation

One aspect of this holiday that I want to participate in and develop is the opportunity to appreciate each other and express gratitude. Amidst the difficulties, it is worth savoring the gifts of our lives and sharing them with others. If big gratitude is hard to find right now, then perhaps we can take pleasure in the smaller things. I’m grateful for my fingers typing these words, the wooly socks on my feet, a fresh cup of coffee waiting for me, the leaves on the ground demonstrating quiet cycles of resurgence, and this beloved community.

Here are a few nice ways to explore gratitude over the next few days and weeks:

What is the next best feeling you can find from where you are now? This will guide you to a form of gratitude that resonates with where you are now and you can keep going up from there, bit by bit.

What do you appreciate about those around you? There is an enormous need for more acknowledgement and appreciation in our lives and communities. Take a few minutes to brainstorm a big list of things you appreciate about someone you love, near or far. Consider sending it to them! What if we started a storm of appreciation texts today? Awesome!

Imagine your pet or something else that makes you feel good and spend time with that sensation. Then let it wash over you too! Often looking at a pet or a houseplant or a loved one can bring on a lovely wash of appreciation and good feeling. Even imagining a beloved animal or a child in our lives can help. Once you feel that sensation of warmth and tenderness, let it wash over you too.

Name 3 things you love about yourself. I know, it can be a bit tough to do this but go for it anyway. I’m sure I could find at least three things I love about you! Be kind and let the good feelings flow.

Reflect on this Mantra. May all who are struggling today find gratitude in the way that’s available to them. -Ritual Well 

Practice the loving kindness meditation. I learned this from Pema Chodron but there are many others teaching this meditation in the world every day and it is always a source of peace available at your fingertips. Starting with yourself and then expanding to those you love, those in your neighborhood, those you find difficult, and outward in growing orbits, say the mantra:

May I feel safe, May I feel strong, May I feel compassion, May I live with ease

May you feel safe, May you feel strong, May you feel compassion, May you live with ease

For more details on this practice, there is a nice summary on mindful.org and a longer discussion with Pema Chodron for the Buddhist context of this practice.

Give it a try and please do share any gratitude practices that are working for you right now, we’d love to hear from you!

Any spark of gratitude will ignite better feelings in you and those around you and do good work in the world. The idea is to get in touch with that genuine feeling of love and gratitude in you.

I hope you enjoy your harvest, love your kin, and find meaningful ways to gather, and give gratitude together this week, and in the days ahead.

May you and may all beings everywhere be happy, healthy, and at peace,

Norah