Why You Should Donate On Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is my FAVORITE holiday. Growing up, I’d spend Thanksgiving lunch with my paternal side of the family and dinner with the maternal side. Nowadays I celebrate with some of my favorite people on the planet, and who are planning a new Japanese cuisine twist to this year’s. I AM SO PUMPED YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW.

As a kid, I loved the origins of Thanksgiving too. The romanticized view was absolutely beautiful: Pilgrims coming together with the local tribe and celebrating the good harvest! Sharing good food with your neighbors in harmony! How utopian! As an adult, I now know the actual details of the first Thanksgiving. The nostalgia and idealism remains, but I’m not going to celebrate while ignoring the less savory parts of the holiday. Because of that, I am also celebrating gratitude by giving back. I encourage you to do the same and donate on Thanksgiving in whatever capacity you are able.

“It’s Not a Proper Thanksgiving If You’re Not Giving Back”

This Thanksgiving week, as I have done during Thanksgivings in the past, I am donating to indigenous nonprofits in celebration of the holiday. The one I like the most is the First Nations Development Institute. In their own words:

With the support of individuals, foundations, corporate and tribal donors, First Nations Development Institute improves economic conditions for Native Americans through technical assistance & training, advocacy & policy, and direct financial grants in multiple key areas:

• Achieving Native Financial Empowerment
• Investing in Native Youth
• Strengthening Tribal & Community Institutions
• Nourishing Native Foods & Health
• Stewarding Native Lands

They’re also incredibly transparent about where your money goes (90% of it goes to the programs, not to admin or fundraising efforts). If you are unsure what to donate to on Thanksgiving, this is the cause I would recommend.

There are plenty of other Native charities if you prefer to support other nonprofit aims. Whatever you choose, I would encourage you to seek out a nonprofit to support during the Thanksgiving season. I am supporting via financial donation because that is the resource I have most in abundance. Besides financial, other ways to support might mean volunteering or writing to your representatives. However you can support a nonprofit makes more difference than no support.

This is a little different to my usual focus of all finances, all the time. I bring it up now because history plays a big role in your economic opportunities today. Thanksgiving is a time to remember that, as it’s arguably the biggest secular holiday in the United States and, therefore, the one with the biggest historical emphasis.

Speaking of history, I have another reason to give back this week besides my love for Thanksgiving. It’s also to honor a part of my own heritage.

My Family Connections to the Cherokee

Not a lot of people know I have some indigenous ancestry. I don’t bring it up much not out of shame, but out of ignorance. I simply don’t know much at all about that side of family history.

My paternal grandma, Nona, was always very proud of her Native heritage. This came complete with sculptures of American Indians filling her only china cabinet and a big painting of a chief in the living room. I didn’t know much about that heritage except for a couple of anecdotes about Nona’s life growing up with her half-native mother. She didn’t talk much about her childhood because it was a violent, impoverished one, which I don’t blame her for. What else I did know was her family moved from Missouri to Illinois around the time of the Great Depression. Beyond that, it was pretty murky.

That is, until my brother Gio began doing irregular research projects on our ancestry. I knew he was doing this and texted him one day asking if he knew which tribe our grandma’s grandma was from. I was expecting a tribe local to the Midwest, because of the Illinois and Missouri connections. What I didn’t expect was the tribe Gio texted me back with:

“Cherokee.”

I didn’t believe him at first because that’s the standard answer for any randos looking to claim Native ancestry. “My ancestor was a Cherokee princess!” is an all-too-common boast that isn’t even true. Even if someone does have Cherokee ancestry, they sure as hell weren’t from a Cherokee princess. The Cherokee never had princesses. (Plus, I suspect these family claims of a Cherokee princess were to explain why one child or cousin comes out with nonwhite features without inciting racist furor; a royal indigenous lineage was historically more acceptable in American society than, say, an Asian or African one.)

Plus, I knew from taking a college course on Native history that the Cherokee weren’t native to the Midwest. They’re from the southeast US, which isn’t far from the Midwest but far enough to be distinct. So I asked for clarification and this exchange followed:

Me: From the south? Are you sure it's not a midwest tribe?
Gio: She was abandoned on the Trail of Tears and was adopted by a German family in Missouri.

I was shocked when I read this. Before that conversation, I had no idea there was a family connection to the Trail of Tears.

Something my fancy college class did not cover (or that I don’t remember it covering) was that there was more than one trail along the Trail of Tears. There were different routes depending on which nation you were looking at (Cherokee, Seminole, Chickasaw, Creek, or Choctaw). For the Cherokee specifically, their route stretched through Missouri territory, where my grandmother was born, and as far north as Illinois, where I was born.

I guess that explains why I don’t have much connection with that part of my heritage. As a traumatized child who ended up adopted elsewhere, she wouldn’t have much either.

More Thanksgiving Thoughts

That only constitutes one piece of my overall heritage. Of my four grandparents, two of them were Irish immigrants and one was the child of Italian immigrants. The last grandparent, Nona, had some English, French, and Pennsylvania Dutch (so German) ancestry in addition to the Cherokee. I’m putting the spotlight on that part of my heritage now because there is one part of my identity that supersedes where my ancestors came from: being American. I was born and raised in the Midwest, then turned 18 and spent the next 11 years in New England. And now I’m moving again to the West Coast. It is all the USA: my formative years, my years as a young professional, and at least the near future.

Because I am American, and a white American, I have unfair advantages over BIPOC. The “I” in that acronym stands for “Indigenous,” aka people who have lived in these lands for centuries before colonists almost completely forced them out. And that is putting it very, very lightly. Comparing that very real history with the beloved significance of Thanksgiving shows a dissonance the average celebration does not acknowledge.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it gives me the most welcoming and accepting feelings out of any other. It’s a day for gratitude, and the prosperity surrounding me serves to make that gratitude that much sweeter, much softer. But it’s simply not right to wrap myself up in all these wonderful emotions without at least recognizing it only started because of the kindness one group extended to another. Kindness that was not repaid.

It’s a struggle to write this thoughtfully without saying “yeah… this smacks of hypocrisy”. Because Thanksgiving truly is a fantastic holiday, BUT.

Cover image credit: Amy Shamblen via Unsplash