Alexandria Library's Blog: Gifts & Thanks. Connecting With Gratitude

Press release from Alexandria Library's Blog:

2021-11-22

Nestled at the end of Native American Heritage Month is the Thanksgiving celebration, a traditional English holiday solidified as a national U.S. celebration during the Civil War. Unfortunately, erroneous legends abound romanticizing a peaceful and even supplicant relationship between the Wampanoag Nation, the Pilgrim colonists and the ever-present issue of land use. The truth, as so often is the case, is much more complex and disheartening.

While these false beliefs surrounding the holiday are burdensome and have lasting impacts, a look at the elemental components in the name, thanks giving, is worth a humble pause. What does it imply to “give thanks?” Shelves teem with resources, but it is a book reissued last year, that has poetically ignited our collective wish to examine what appreciation and reciprocity can look like between humans and the land. In Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, author Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist, professor and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, uses her training, experiences and traditional ecological knowledge to share the wisdom of being in right relationship to one another and to the complex system of life on which we depend.

Central to the book is the “gift economy,” that is, an economy not based on profit and ownership, but a system of giving rooted in interdependent understanding. Kimmerer, through her exploration of plant and human connections, explains the intention of asking permission and offering acknowledgement allows us to connect in ways that are lifegiving.

As you prepare to meet with friends and family, consider what ways your relationships have been gifts: through lovingly made food from the ancient ground in which it grew, in the nurturing by people and the planet, by the offered opportunity to rest and reflect. How does one respond to a gift? What is the value of a gift?   

To explore some of the writings and teachings that address these concepts, check out these resources:

This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving by David J. Silverman. 2019: Bloomsbury.

“The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance” by Robin Wall Kimmerer. 2020: Emergence Magazine.

Wisdomkeepers: Meetings with Native American Spiritual Elders compiled by Harvey Arden, photograph by Steve Wall. 1990: Beyond Words.  

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2020).

Inhabitants [Film]. Directed by Costa Boutsikaris and Anna Palmer. 2020. Available through the 46th Annual American Indian Film Festival until November 13.

All We can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Keeble Wilkinson. 2020: One World.

Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World by Simon Winchester. 2021: HarperCollins.  

“Territory Acknowledgement” Native Land Digital. 2021.

Image source: Ferris, J. L. G. (ca. 1932) The first Thanksgiving/ J.L.G. Ferris. Massachusetts, ca. 1932. Cleveland, Ohio: The Foundation Press, Inc. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2001699850/.

This press release was produced by Alexandria Library's Blog. The views expressed here are the author’s own.