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During this holiday season, it’s so important to teach the real history of Thanksgiving for kids. It can be so tempting to go along with fun Pilgrim and Indian activities with family or at school. But when we advocate for an honest, rich, representative, and complete history of Thanksgiving, we prepare our children to be critical thinkers who are prepared to live inclusion in their own lives.
I hope this family Thanksgiving guide with resources for teaching and understanding the true history is helpful. It will allow your family to focus not just on truth, but also on the joy of indigenous communities and traditions through books, activities, videos, food, and more. I hope it helps you have a wonderful and just Thanksgiving season!
We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga by Traci Sorell (Author), Frane Lessac (Illustrator)
Available on Amazon, Bookshop, Target, Walmart (there’s a board book version now!)
The real Thanksgiving story is very different from what many of us were taught in school. Here are some facts to help you navigate the story of the holiday in your family.
Sources:
Flag from HERE
You might think, what’s the harm in sharing a happy story? Even if it’s not true, it’s a great metaphor for kindness and friendship, and befriending those who are different from us. Isn’t that what we all want?
Yes, it is, but it is dangerous to use false narratives to push this. When we celebrate the incorrect story of the “first Thanksgiving,” we are also celebrating all that colonists did to arrive and harm the indigenous peoples. When we ignore the true history, we ignore the fact that English settlers came and brought disease, took land, dug up graves, and later murdered indigenous people. By continuing to celebrate the Pilgrims, it makes it seem like colonization really wasn’t that bad, and that it wasn’t a big deal. But it was.
It’s a very sad history, and when we celebrate the feast, we also celebrate the Pilgrims who perpetuated a great deal of harm. We should remember that when celebrating the Pilgrims, we communicate that only white colonist history is important.
It is also important to be tribally specific. We should not talk about general “Indians,” as there are many different indigenous tribes with different cultural traditions. Whenever possible, we should use the specific names of tribes.
That’s why it’s important to learn an accurate history of what happened in 1621. While some may feel they would still like to set aside a time of gratitude and family enjoyment, others may feel this to be a time of sadness that reminds them of oppression against them and their ancestors.
In fact, the National Day of Mourning is a protest organized by indigenous peoples in the Northeast United States against the past and continued suffering endured by Native peoples. When indigenous peoples express that it is hurtful to share a made up story, we should listen. For many, it feels like a celebration and feast in honor of genocide, and we should be wary of that.
It can be difficult to give up the Thanksgiving stories you once knew, along with the traditional school activities of dressing up as Pilgrims and Indians. However, remember that when celebrating a mythical version of the first Thanksgiving, we also celebrate colonists who brought a great deal of harm to indigenous peoples.
Instead, consider giving thanks and celebrating with your families with the following respectful Thanksgiving ideas:
It’s important that we continue to seek out facts to learn truth concerning colonial US history. This packet I found on Teachers Pay Teachers is a wonderful way to engage young children in thinking about Thanksgiving.
Use this Harvest Ceremony study guide and learn more about how the Wamponoag celebrated. You can also read this article deconstructing Thanksgiving myths.
This message of peace and gratitude for the earth and everything in it has versions in a number of Native American cultures. You may also want to read this beautiful Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address. It’s one of my favorite family Thanksgiving ideas!
We can all participate in feelings of gratitude. Have everyone in your family share something for which they are grateful, just as indigenous peoples do.
Read indigenous texts, fiction and nonfiction. Avoid only reading about just what really happened in 1620. Instead, use this as an opportunity to learn more about different indigenous tribes and give them the honor and interest they deserve. Support indigenous authors and learn indigenous stories.
We can also listen to indigenous people’s perspectives on Thanksgiving and celebrating it. This article has has comments from across the spectrum.
Here’s a big list of inclusive Thanksgiving books, including a number of own voices books sharing indigenous stories. Here’s a video of one of my favorites, We Are Water Protectors, as read by the author!
Corn was incredibly important to indigenous populations. Many native communities show respect to this crop through dance and art. Make a corn necklace to remember its importance to the Wampanoag, and how they used it to help the colonists.
Materials:
While some communities celebrated giving thanks during harvest time for many years on and off, it was never a regular occurrence, and certainly not with the colonists and the natives coming together.
It was not until 1863 that Thanksgiving became an official national holiday. Sarah Hale, having written to many US Presidents to request the creation of the holiday, wrote to President Lincoln. A magazine editor and children’s book writer, she persisted for over 30 years in her quest to make Thanksgiving a national holiday.
Finally, President Lincoln, in an effort to unify a divided union during the Civil War, agreed to officially make Thanksgiving a holiday that would take place on the 4th Thursday of November.
You can read this wonderful children’s book about Sarah Hale!
There are a number of opportunities to advocate for indigenous communities. Thanksgiving is a perfect opportunity to place the focus back on them and their native lands.
You can support organizations like the American Indian Science and Engineering Society or the National Indian Child Care Association. Thanksgiving is a great opportunity to spend your privilege (a concept from Tiffany Jewell’s book This Book is Anti-Racist) by financially supporting Native communities as a minor reparation.
You can also look up what indigenous land you are using, and support organizations such as Land Rights Now that secure land rights of indigenous peoples.
There are lots of opportunities to support businesses with indigenous connections. Here are some Native-owned brands to support!
You can share accurate resources with your child’s teacher to ensure s/he is teaching truth in the classroom. If your child’s classroom is having a Thanksgiving celebration, you can contact the teacher to find out the content of the program.
You may feel free to share this resource with any teachers looking for ideas!
If your teacher is looking for something to do for a program to replace a Pilgrims and Indians dramatization, you can suggest putting together a thankful program. Children may work together in groups to recite a poem, do a dance, and more to share the things for which they are thankful. This may include a reading of the Thanksgiving address, or perhaps a picture book read aloud of an indigenous own voice book such as We Are Water Protectors or Fry Bread.
If you’d like a sample email to send to your child’s teacher, pop your email in below and it will come right to your inbox!
It can be tricky to navigate teaching accurate Thanksgiving history to little kids as there is quite a bit of violence and harm inherent in the history. Teaching incomplete histories about colonization can make it seem that colonization wasn’t that bad, or was maybe even beneficial to indigenous peoples. This is false.
Here are some basic facts that you can share with even young children:
Nasaump is a traditional Wampanoag meal. It is a porridge made out of corn. You may top it with nuts and fruit, including cranberries. Here are several different traditional nasaump recipes!
Write all the letters of your name in a column going up and down. Write down one thing for which you are grateful that starts with each letter of your name!
Jasmine of the amazing First Name Basis Podcast has created a free e-book called Harvest that discusses harvest festivals around the world – it’s a wonderful resource! Students may choose two different festivals and compare and contrast. What kinds of foods are common? How about colors, family celebrations, or other traditions?
This activity from Teaching Tolerance has students read two texts from indigenous authors. One wrote a speech to introduce the Thanksgiving Mourning protests, and one is an indigenous woman who chooses to celebrate Thanksgiving as a form of healing. Read the texts and answer the included questions.
It can be really uncomfortable to confront truths in our own ancestral histories. And the point of this family guide to Thanksgiving is not to cause shame! Shame doesn’t help those who are harmed.
Instead, we should work to “spend our privilege” (again, a concept from Jewell’s book). This means we can use the privileges granted to us by centuries of oppression to indigenous peoples to support them in their work and move toward equity.
This could look like financially supporting indigenous creators (influencers, small shops, etc.), advocating for justice and land rights, or speaking out to friends and family. Here are a few indigenous-owned shops that sell blue corn items, handmade soap, candles, and here are more bath & beauty items and also art.
The final question – can we still celebrate Thanksgiving? That’s really for you to decide. As we learned in the writing assignment from the two indigenous authors, even different native individuals will feel differently – indigenous people are not a monolith.
In the end, it’s truly up to you if you choose to teach an accurate history of Thanksgiving and use it as a day of mourning for the harm that took place, or a day to claim joy in moving forward and reclaiming lands.
Either way, I encourage you to learn and discuss. If you choose to celebrate, keep the focus on indigenous history and joy, gratitude, and family togetherness and friendship. And continue to advocate for indigenous rights.
We’ve loved putting together this resource with accurate Thanksgiving activities for kids. We’d love to hear if you do any of these activities!
We hope to inspire curiosity and connection through exploring and learning, and we hope this guide helps you and your families. Please share any activities you do with us over on our Instagram. And we’d be delighted if you passed this Thanksgiving with kids resource along to others, as well!
