Q&A YOU ASK, WE ANSWER

What is the National Day of Mourning?

SHORT ANSWER While most Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, many others struggle to give thanks

LONG ANSWER Every fourth Thursday in November, tens of millions of Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, chiefly by devouring a huge turkey meal and watching parades or American football. The national holiday marks the harvest feast shared between the Pilgrims (the colonists who came over on the Mayflower) and the Wampanoag people in 1621.

But the day has also come to be known as a National Day of Mourning for Native American communities in New England. To them, Thanksgiving is not a cause for celebration. It is a reminder of the heinous acts perpetrated by generations of European settlers and then the US government: genocide, land stealing, and relentless attacks on their cultures and livelihoods.

In 1970, Wamsutta, an elder of the Aquinnah Wampanoag, was invited to a Thanksgiving state dinner in Plymouth, Massachusetts – the site of the Pilgrims’ colony – and asked to give a speech, which had to be approved first. When his impassioned indictment of the white conquest of native lands was, perhaps unsurprisingly, deemed to be inflammatory, Wamsutta then declined the invitation.

Instead, the elder led a protest to Cole’s Hill and declared the first National Day of Mourning. Today, the United American Indians of New England (UAINE) organise a march and rally to honour their ancestors and educate the public about why Thanksgiving should