Have you been keeping up with what is happening now at Standing Rock?

Contributed By:Dorothy Nevils

“Happy Thanksgiving!” It’s a greeting that this week is on everybody’s lips. Churches have loaded up turkeys, food banks have sent out requests for special donations, and overworked and underpaid workers at O’Hare won’t strike until after the holidays. Even stores have gotten in on the generosity, some closing their doors and allowing their employees to spend time with family, while others slash their prices, a gesture of generosity, we’re supposed to believe.

Thanksgiving. It’s about family. It’s about gratitude. It’s about blessings. It’s about food. People who have rarely turned their faces earthward bend their necks and take up the posture of piety.

Have you ever considered who’s at the table, and who isn’t?

I remember especially sixth grade at Pleasant Ridge, the two room “colored” school on Lufkin Road in West Mounds, and our 5th – 8th grade teacher, Bessie Thompson, who made Thanksgiving week come alive for me. We read the story of the open-armed, welcoming natives, who shared the bounty of the land on an over-laden table and feasted with what we knew as “pilgrims.”

The pilgrims were “saintly people,” the men dressed plainly in black clothing with shiny buckles and shoes, and the women donning long dresses, their heads covered, much like the nuns most of us, stuck in the “sticks,” had never seen. It was pretty obvious for all but the dullest that the “Indians” were the benefactors.

Have you been keeping up with what is happening now at Standing Rock? We have the “natives” and those who came from other lands, but things have changed. The most logical change, you’d think, is “turn around… now it’s my turn,” the way we do with people who have befriended us. You know how it goes: The people across the street picked up your kid from the bus stop… you pick up their mail when they go out of town, the “kinda do unto others thang.”

It’s not happening. The natives received the – how shall we call them… “immigrants (?)” … taught them how – and helped them – to survive, how to grow food, nursed them back to health with their natural medicines…

Now, the table prepared and set before them has been turned! Promises have been broken, and, similar to the grandma to big bad wolf “transformation,” the interloper becomes the native, armed and insistent in endangering their water supply and destroying the ground sacred to them.

I don’t want to spoil your Thanksgiving, for the overturned table is the truth for many of us. However, the lesson of the real “feast” should not be lost. As we bow our heads in thanks for what is many times inconsequential stuff, let us examine what is really important.

Let us question our behavior, our interaction with others, our promises made – whether consciously, or by default – and whether we are, day by day, keeping those promises. Let’s examine our record of standing with and defending the promises made to and/or by others. Does our behavior say all people matter; that every person is created equal; that the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is inalienable?

May we be thankful for all the good in our lives… then look outside the tiny circle that is our world, educate ourselves, and live so that others may be thankful… for us.

Story Posted:11/24/2016