Settler Colonialism, Genocide and Indigenous Resistance: A Thanksgiving invitation for White People to Learn directly from First Nations people

Thanksgiving is going to be different for many of us this year. With the COVID pandemic, many of us will have smaller meals, with fewer family members, and lots of us will not be traveling to celebrate the holiday.

However, there is another reason that Thanksgiving is different this year. Ever since the national uprising in the aftermath of the public lynching of George Floyd, those of us who are white, have been forced to think about our privilege and the system of White Supremacy, a system which is at the root of this country’s history.

Black, Indigenous and other communities of color have not only been resisting against police/state violence, they have been attacking symbols of White Supremacy, by bringing down statues, by forcing sports teams to change their names, by forcing corporations to change their product brands and forcing white society to have to re-think our role in perpetuating White Supremacy.

Over the next few days, instead of just enjoying meals with family and friends, I invite White people to engage in some self-reflection and self-education about the history of Settler Colonialism, Genocide an Indigenous Resistance. All of the educational resources that are listed below, are educational and activist resources from indigenous people.

Books

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, by Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz

A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present, by War Churchill

Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance, by Nick Estes

As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock, Dina Gilio-Whitaker

All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life, by Winona LaDuke

Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Cultural Genocide, by George Tinker

Documentaries

The Canary Effect

Incident at Oglala

Websites

Indigenous Environmental Network

It Takes Roots

Indigenous Action

Zines

Accomplices Not Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex

Colonization and Decolonization

Stop saying this is a nation of immigrants