For those who don’t know: “On the fourth Thursday in November, Native Americans and supporters come together to remember the real story behind Thanksgiving. Instead of a celebration, this day is a powerful protest and remembrance, giving voice to histories often left out of national narratives. For many, it is a reminder of the loss, violence, and broken promises that began with colonization – and of the resilience that endures. The event includes speeches, prayers, and a march through Plymouth, spotlighting Indigenous rights and the need for justice.” (from Awareness Days)
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Excerpts from a speech by Lea Kayali from the Palestinian Youth Movement:
Colonialism robs us of mourning itself, because it rids us as indigenous people from our roots and supplants an ongoing structure of violence. It is a genocide factory that breaks our bones, steals our land, and criminalizes our existence..
When we mourn publicly during colonial onslaught-as we do today, we force the world to bear witness to the glorious lives that our people lived. ..
We honor the martyrs even and especially when those in power want to erase them from the pages of history. awe see this i. the war waged on children both against native kids and Palestinian ones.
We mourn the unmarked graves that thousands of native children,abused and killed in boarding schools were laid to rest at. And we also mourn the thousands of Palestinian children buried under rubble. But when we mourn we remember their names, the tenor of their lives, the space left in the heart of their families. From Hind Rajab, the six year old Palestinian whose last cry for help haunted the world to John Parkour, the Ojibway boy who was stolen from White Earth Reservation, we will honor all our martyrs.
But the fragility of life is the tender underbelly of the lion of resistance...
When I spoke last year, I said that to be indigenous is to hold a sacred, prophetic relation to our lands..'
We have a legacy to uphold. Whenever. as a Palestinian, I fear our cultural extinction, I remember how the Kanaka Mahi resisted the near elimination of their language, and in the span of a couple decades raised an entire generation of speakers. I remind myself of the Wampanoag Language Reclamation Project that revitalized the ancestral language of this very land.
And as our comrades in the Red Nation sa, for our earth to live capitalism and colonialism must die.
Lea Kayali
Leonard Peltier spoke to the gathering via UAINE livestream and a a written message.