Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. There are no big expectations in our house. Just good food and we love to prepare and serve good food. It’s kind of our thing. Also relaxing time with family. So what’s not to love?

Well, for starters and finishers, there’s the history. Its ugly and lurid and how we tell the story, what story we tell, matters. It matters a lot. With adoption, adopters have been creating the script they want told about adoption rather than letting adoptees tell their own story. Thusly, those who colonized this country, have told the story from our perspective for centuries. It’s way past time for that to end.

My mother’s dear friend Elizabeth is indigenous. She moved away when I was in the midst of prime time-consuming parenting time and so sadly I haven’t talked to her in years. Her sister was Miss Indian America in 1971 and so via google I saw that she is listed as Cherokee which is what I thought I remembered but wasn’t certain. Elizabeth was so dear to me as she was one of a couple of my mother’s friends who helped provide “mothering” to me after the death of my own mother when I was 19. Her own mother died when she was younger as well and she raised her sister from the age of 11. One time we talked about how she felt a little lost when she passed the age her mother was when she died and I never forgot that, especially when I passed the age my mother was. I also remember her grace and peaceful demeanor and oh how I wish I would have taken more time to learn more about her and her childhood.

Here are several indigenous women I have been following and reading and I am hoping we can all at the very least begin to turn the script over to those whose stories have not been listened to as widely as they should. They are difficult at times, but like much in life it seems that in order to  learn hard lessons it gets ugly for awhile. The only alternative is to pretend the ugly isn’t there and history has shown us that that hasn’t served us very well at all.

Kaitlin Curtice has two blog posts to which I would direct you. One is a list of books written by indigenous peoples for ages children through adults. For instance, I listened to the audiobook Heart Berries by Therese Mailhot from this list. It’s the poetic and agonizingly painful memoir of a young indigenous woman. A second blog post from Kaitlin is filled with resources to navigate this Native American Heritage Month and particularly Thanksgiving. She has also written the book Glory Happening which I am slowly making my way through as to savor it through this holiday season when we get so caught up in the busyness of it all and need reminders of the Glory in everyday life.

I encourage you simply to start. To begin to learn and listen with an openness to the voices of those who can speak for themselves of their history and experiences. We all need, want to be heard and so we all must also be listeners.