Native Americans hold National Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving in solidarity with Indigenous struggles around the globe

On a grassy hill overlooking the water in Plymouth, Massachusetts, a couple thousand people gathered last November on what US calendars call Thanksgiving Day.

Sitting in the nearby harbor next to Cole’s Hill was a replica of the original Mayflower ship that arrived in Massachusetts in 1620.

The somber occasion remembered the atrocities faced by Native Americans over the centuries. Now, the event has expanded over the years to stand in solidarity with other Indigenous struggles across the world.

The people who were gathered were energetic as they convened with a sense of unity and shared purpose.

Every year since 1970, the United American Indians of New England has hosted a National Day of Mourning in opposition to Thanksgiving Day.

That was the year when the Commonwealth of Massachusetts invited Wamsutta Frank James of the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe to speak at a banquet in celebration of the 350th anniversary of the arrival of the Pilgrims to what is now the US.

“He went away and he wrote a speech and he came back and the event organizers told him that he could under no circumstances give the speech because it was too inflammatory,” said his granddaughter, Kisha James, who is also a co-leader of the National Day of Mourning.

She said her grandfather had been invited with the idea that he’d give a speech recreating the Pilgrims’ version of a joyous celebration with the Native population. 

But that was not the speech Wamsutta Frank James wrote.

“The speech told the truth about the pilgrims and their relationship to the Indigenous population. And so the organizers of the event told him that they would write him a speech that he could give. He refused to have words put into his mouth and was subsequently disinvited from the banquet,” Kisha James explained.

The incident sparked the first National Day of Mourning. Wamsutta Frank James and a group of others wanted a space for native peoples to speak without being suppressed.

In the speech that he didn’t get the chance to deliver, he recounted atrocities and broken promises, the robbing of ancestral graves and the continuous theft of land.

The desire to speak about that history is still part of the event today.

Over the years, UAINE and other native organizations have worked to highlight Indigenous struggles around the world.

For example, in the 1980s, “there was a lot of expression of solidarity here with movements in El Salvador. Speaking out against the genocide of Maya people in Guatemala,” according to Mahtowin Munro, the other co-leader of the annual event.

Munro said that solidarity with other Indigenous groups around the world existed even beforethe National Day of Mourning began. There were protests against the US war in Vietnam — and later the one in Iraq — and actions in solidarity with the people of Northern Ireland.

Munro remembers a movement in opposition to apartheid in South Africa.

“There had been a national tour of people speaking about native political prisoners here and in speaking about the need to free Nelson Mandela,” she said.

Another political prisoner here at home who is highlighted at each year’s gathering is Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist who has been imprisoned for nearly 50 years. He was convicted in the 1975 killings of two FBI agents in South Dakota and has been denied parole.

His attorney maintains that he was wrongly convicted, and rights groups, including Amnesty International, have called for his release.

Last year, Peltier wrote a letter to be read on his behalf at the National Day of Mourning gathering. Chali’Naru Dones, a member of the Taino Indigenous group, read it to the crowd:

“We are changing the world. Every one of us must grasp what is ours to change. History is not something that happens in a vacuum.”

Harriet Prince, from a First Nations community in Canada, also spoke at the event. She recalled being taken away from her family at the age of four, along with her brother and sister, for a form of schooling now recognized as forced assimilation. She didn’t see her parents again until she was 17.

Another issue that featured prominently in last year’s gathering was support for Palestinians, especially at a time that the current war in Gaza was escalating.

“You know that our struggles are intertwined,” Palestinian American Salma Abu Ayyash told the crowd in a speech.

That sentiment isn’t new. UAINE and other Native American groups have expressed solidarity with Palestinians for decades. And it’s also expected to be part of this year’s event.

Meanwhile, environmental advocacy is likely to be another major issue at this year’s gathering.

“This is a time that Indigenous peoples are returning back to their homelands after international convenings such as COP29 in Azerbaijan,” explained Jean-Luc Pierite, president of the North American Indian Center of Boston.

Pierite is part of the federally recognized Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana. He also has a grandmother from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.

He added that the gatherers are looking for real solutions centered around the knowledge of Indigenous peoples.

“We’ve lived sustainably since time immemorial,” he said. “And we are pushing forward a vision for a future of moving away from fossil fuels.”

He added that Indigenous communities around the world share common causes.

“We’re hearing stories from other Indigenous peoples in the fights for clean water, for clean air, for an end to violence against our women. So we’re bound together by this entwined struggle for liberation,” he said.

The National Day of Mourning is a chance for those issues to take center stage.

This year’s gathering will take place on Nov. 28.

Related: Pope Francis apologizes to Canada’s Indigenous communities. But some say it doesn’t go far enough.