From Rev. Florence Caplow

I first began fasting on Thanksgiving three years ago, after returning from traveling to be with the Water Protectors at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. By Thanksgiving of that year, people still at Standing Rock were being sprayed with freezing water by the police, and experiencing other violence and danger, and my heart was very much with them. It felt right to spend Thanksgiving Day, associated with the supposed “friendship” between native people and settlers, in fasting and prayer for those at Standing Rock.

All over America people are beginning to brine their turkeys, greet their out-of-town guests, stock up on beverages and prepare for the great American celebration of food, family, friends, and abundance. I love that we spend this holiday in celebration, but….

I can’t do it.

As I prepare for this year’s Thanksgiving, what I felt then seems just as relevant now, even though the Dakota Access pipeline has been built. All fall we have been honoring the tribal nations who were once on this land, in a land acknowledgment in the Sunday service, and each week when I have researched their histories and their stories my heart has been torn to read once again what was done to take, by force, this place we call “ours” now.

Instead I will spend Thanksgiving fasting from sunup to sundown. I will spend the day in prayer, remorse, and grief for the 500-year ongoing genocide on this continent, and all the ways we continue to harm the land, the water, and the air. I will also spend the day in gratitude for the immense courage and resilience of the original peoples of this land, who fight for us too, and this beautiful continent and planet that we share.

We must find a different way forward, one that does not end with original peoples dying in the snow, does not end with another victory for American “progress” and the hoop of Indian nations broken again. One that does not end with death and more loss, for all of us. So my fasting is for our nation as well.

When I went to Standing Rock in the fall of 2016, I went partly because I sensed that something important was happening there, a new way of being, the rising up of native peoples out of the ashes of nearly successful genocide, joined by thousands from around the world in a new wave of solidarity and hope. And that’s the way it felt there, the most life affirming, spiritual, powerful event perhaps of my lifetime.

And yes, the people were scattered, the pipeline was built (and that very pipeline has leaked multiple times), but the people have not survived more than 500 years without the capacity to keep going, keep resisting, keep surviving. And they need us to stand with them, we who have benefited so immeasurably from the land that was taken.

Staff at the indigenous organization Native Hope write, “We hope that this Thanksgiving, the hearts of all people, Native and non-Native, are filled with hope, healing, and a desire to dismantle the barriers—physical, economic, educational, psychological, and spiritual— that divide us and oppress us.”

This is my Thanksgiving prayer.

I call out to the four directions
and to the power of life that flows through all things
to protect the lives of those standing before the pipelines and the bulldozers
on the plains of North America and the rainforests of South America
to protect the lives of indigenous peoples on our borders and on reservations
to awaken in all government and corporate officials the force of conscience
and to answer the prayers of people everywhere
for a world of love and justice
for a world still vibrant and diverse, knowing in my heart
“the only weapons that are useful in this battle
are the weapons of truth, faith, and compassion.”

*the last words are from the spoken word poet Lyla June, from her video, All Nations Rise (https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=RDnr2VLI8jKww&v=nr2VLI8jKww).