Greetings Family, It is that time of year to focus on being grateful and entering the silence. Many of us gather together with family and friends to share a traditional meal of turkey, stuffing, yams, cranberrys and pumpkin pie. I truly wish you all a healthy day of love and peace. I want to extend my gratitude for my family, both biological and spiritual. I want to let each of you who have supported me through the years, and continue to support our vision of healing and providing medicine to the people, that i am grateful and i love you. I want to tell you all how much I appreciate any support you have extended to the Little Shoppe. Creator certainly has blessed my family with love, diversity and spiritual connection with each of you. I truly am grateful. When you enter your moment of gratitude please extend a prayer for all those who have gone before us. Our ancestors, whoever they are, have all suffered through sacrifices, discrimination, loss and lessons. I believe they can assist us from the Spirit world in our choices and our efforts to finish our Earth Walk in grace. During this time of the year I like to remind everyone of the true history of Thanksgiving. This is not to spoil your day of graitude or inhibit your celebration on any level. It is to encourage you to walk your talk, and to truly make this a day of gratitude for your present gifts of spirit and make it a day of truth. It is a time to remember our Ancestors and their losses and gains throughout history, and we do this by honoring them with truth. If we can courageously embrace the events that make up the history of this Nation, there in between the many versions, we may find some truth, some understanding and mend the sacred hoop. Below is only one version of the history behind thanksgiving for my people, but different versions of history can be found. This one can be found at danielnpaul/TheRealThanksgiving.html Here is the story: Thanksgiving Day was proclaimed by Governor Winthrop of the Massachussetts Bay Colony in 1637. Thousands of years before this official proclamation, North American Indigenous people across the continent had celebrated seasons of Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a very ancient concept to American Indian nations. The difficulty with the American Thanksgiving holiday is its false association with American Indian people. The infamous Indians and pilgrims myth. Being thankful for your blessings is an important part of our living in balance and this intent can be seen in the celebrations and ceremonies among Indigenous peoples. So the concept of this tradition, Thanksgiving is a good thing. However, it is not good to distort history, or to falsely portray the origin of this holiday and silence the truth of its actual inception. Here are some more accurate historical facts about the true origin of this American holiday that may interest you............................... Thanksgiving did not begin as a great loving relationship between the pilgrims and the Wampanoag, Pequot and Narragansett people. In fact, in October of 1621 when the pilgrim survivors of their first winter in Turtle Island sat down to share the first unofficial Thanksgiving meal, the Indians who were there were not even invited! There was no turkey, squash, cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie. A few days before this alleged feast took place, a company of pilgrims led by Miles Standish actively sought the head of a local Indian chief, and an 11 foot high wall was erected around the entire Plymouth settlement for the very purpose of keeping Indians out! Officially, the holiday we know as Thanksgiving actually came into existence in the year 1637. Governor Winthrop of the Massachussetts Bay Colony proclaimed this first official day of Thanksgiving and feasting to celebrate the return of the colonys men who had arrived safely from what is now Mystic, Connecticut. They had gone there to participate in the massacre of over 700 Pequot men, women and children, and Mr. Winthrop decided to dedicate an official day of thanksgiving complete with a feast to give thanks for their great victory.... As hard as it may be to conceive, this is the actual origin of our current Thanksgiving Day holiday. This holiday is not observed by many American Indian people, for obvious reasons. My hope is that Americans as a whole will one day acknowledge its true origin and bring honor to those who suffered pain and losses on this day. I still embrace this day as a day of thanks and recognize its importance as a reminder to be grateful for all things, in its place and in its time this is a good thing. Teaching my children about their heritage and the true history of their ancestors is part of how I choose to honor those who went before us. Teaching them that we each have choices and with them come consequences and being accountable for them. Other stories may only distort the minds of the children, and so our future. We must continue to teach them not to cover up truth. We must also continue to teach them not to live in the past, but to learn from it. Let us face the truths of the past, and give thanks that we are moving forward in hope, in learning love and respect one another in our diversity. Posted with much love and peace and honor for my people Sandy LittleLizard
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 02:39:32 +0000
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