Thanksgiving is a year-round practice of giving thanks
For local Wampanoags, and Indigenous people throughout North America, gathering to give thanks was already a familiar custom, taking place not just annually, but 13 times throughout the lunar, calendar year — a cycle known as the Thirteen Moons or Thirteen Thanksgivings.
"Thanksgivings are a big part of our culture. Giving thanks is how we pray," says Kerri Helme, a Mashpee Wampanoag whose tribal ancestors were the first to engage with Plymouth's Pilgrims when they arrived..."
"..Come November, when temperatures drop, the focus shifts from harvesting to hunting during Hunters Moon, the next celebration in the cycle.
"That moon is an important time for us," says Cassius Spears Jr. first councilman of the Narragansett tribe in Rhode Island.
But in recent decades wildlife, habitat and the cycle of the Thirteen Moons themselves face threats, Spears says, from climate change.
"If the strawberries aren't growing, how are you going to have a strawberry thanksgiving? If the green corn is stunted because of drought and it's not ready for harvest, or the quantity isn't there at the end of the season, how are we able to do our ceremonies?" he asks.
In answer to his own questions, Spears says Indigenous people will find ways to endure, as they always have, just as day follows night.
"We give thanks every day when the sun rises, or the sun sets, we give thanks. So it's something that we do. It's a part of who we are, which is far, far removed from American Thanksgiving and football and turkey and getting mad at your family" he says, wryly.
Expressing gratitude thirteen times a year, Spears concludes, not only shows respect for the earth, but keeps Indigenous people in close touch with the cycles of creation's blessings.
SOURCE: NPR Thanksgiving is a Year-Round Practice
Today is Native American Heritage Day.
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