"Here in Onagamiising, our thoughts turn this month to the beauty of seasonal changes as the earth prepares to take her winter nap under the lovely white blanket of snow that will soon fall. As we get further into the month, we look forward to the Thanksgiving Day holiday and dinner — and children will look forward to the extra excitement of two days off from school!
Thanksgiving Day is about my favorite day of the year. Onishishin; I think it is wonderful to have an entire national holiday set aside for the purpose of acknowledging blessings and expressing appreciation. I love turkey, stuffing and wild rice, and love eating it with my family. In recent years, my daughters have taken over the preparation of much of the feast, and I have become the grandma whose family makes sure has a comfortable chair and doesn’t have to do too much work!
As a national holiday, Thanksgiving Day is a commemoration of what in school we used to call “the first thanksgiving.”
Of course, that was not the first thanksgiving feast at all. Celebrating the end of the harvest season and giving thanks to the Creator for the blessings of food, and the beauty of the world, and life, and each other, has been part of people’s lives all over the world for more centuries than any of us can say.
Certainly it was a tradition in the lives of the Native people whose kind-heartedness saved the lives of the Pilgrims."
Get the Story:Linda LeGarde Grover: Migwechiwendam: To think thankfully (The Duluth Budgeteer News 10/30) Related Stories:
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Linda Grover: Onishishin -- It's all good in Ojibwe (8/8)
Linda Grover: Native women held in high regard (7/11)
Linda Grover: Passing on the Ojibwe language (3/21)
Column: Reservations are more than just land (2/22)