is dedicated to gratitude. As it should be, every American should be thankful for the Indigenous folk who saved their starving fundamentalist fannies so that the culture could grow and weed out those who helped in their time of dire need. So, many get together and re-envision what that gratitude could look like now — they thank their families and friends, they thank their lucky stars and Mother Earth, and they hopefully remember to step up and help others in dire need. Capitalism has commercialized it to the hilt, but I like to think that the core of the re-envisioning still stands for most of us.
I feel like I certainly see it in our growing community. Everyone can be a part of decolonization by lending a helping hand (and especially to Native peoples who now may need individual help, as people of our community, and culturally for both politics and capitalism to get out of their way so they can assert their right to self — and social– determination). As Tribal Chief Clarissa Sabattis, of the Houlton Maliseet says, “Food is sacred”, and this festival we call ‘Thanksgiving’ is about understanding food, and food sovereignty — as access to food, and the right to feed ourselves what we think is important, local, and best (and as the right to one’s culture and essential being).
Food is fundamental to how we congregate as community, how we care for each other, how we care for ourselves — it has helped us evolve (and sometimes devolve) physically and socially. And all revolutions relate to the ability to feed the people. Food is health, food is ethics, food is (unfortunately) politics. Food should be healthy and medicinal. Food should be fair and equitable. Food should be shared.
I want to take a moment just to thank some of our magnificient folk who have shared their food with us, coming in and offering their foraged, their homemade, and their homegrown. They’ve bartered and freely given. We’ve been luck to receive such bounty — tons of gorgeous basil (tulsi, thai, lemon, genovese), tons of gorgeous mushrooms (heads of maitake, black trumpet, yellow footed chanterelles and many more), ramps, scapes, eggs, lamb, bear jerky, honey, salads, jams, cookies, and almond bark, smoked chili powder, and bushels of Hatch green chili, berries, and cakes, and creme brulee, kombucha, maple syrup, and seeds. Some have opened their tables to us and we have eaten together. We are grateful indeed.
Rock Bottom Homestead 