I am with you 100% on this. As a white person, I feel a tremendous amount of guilt for what has happened with our indigenous people. When I first heard about the "Indian Schools" I was horrified. As a mother, I can empathize (I also had a child stolen from me) with that grief and trauma and I struggle with how to repay the debt we owe them (not to mention the trauma of the slaves brought here against their will).
I have been embarrassed to be white because of what my ancestors have done.
I know no amount of sympathy or how hard I say "sorry" can EVER make up for the atrocities committed against them, but I offer it up, anyway. I wish I could do something more.
Excellent piece; thank you for putting words to what so many of us feel.
Far be it for me to manage or worse dictate another adult's emotions. But, try not to feel guilt, join me in celebrating and amplifying Indigenous voices and spaces. Be a co-conspirator rather than an "ally". And do as I do: shut up and listen, we as white folks cannot understand what the BIPOC experience is in this country. And most of us can't even empathize because the narrative is written by white folks for white folks. Perhaps grab a copy of Howard Zinn "A people's history of the United states" and learn the "losing" side's perspective. He's also "white" people, and Gonzo of the first order.
My family has been invited to Thanksgiving at a black friend's house and we are going to go. Her exact words were "You get your babies and come to my house and experience a Black Thanksgiving." I'm excited and looking forward to the food, the people (we've been friends for 6 years and I'm well aquainted with her family) and whatever customs they have. My kids are looking forward to the food and other kids haha.
But I intend to listen and observe. And enjoy all the food! 😁
A little taste of my next article coming out on Thursday. It's actually about Mutual Aid for this month's issue of the underground tribune.
As we navigate this season, often sanitized under the banner of “Thanksgiving,” we must pause to observe Truthsgiving. We cannot honestly discuss the concept of community support without first acknowledging the brutal machinery of settler-colonialism that sought to dismantle the sophisticated societies already thriving on Turtle Island.
The myth of the “First Thanksgiving” serves to whitewash a history of genocide, displacement, and the systematic erasure of Indigenous culture. But what was also attacked in this process was a profound, pre-existing structure of survival: Mutual Aid. Long before European theorists penned essays on the evolutionary benefits of cooperation, Indigenous nations were living it.
From the Potlatch ceremonies of the Pacific Northwest to the kinship networks of the Plains, Indigenous communities possessed robust, sophisticated systems of resource redistribution. In these societies, poverty was not a moral failing of the individual, but a failure of the community—an impossibility in a circle where wealth was measured not by what you hoarded, but by what you gave away. Survival was a collective mandate, woven into the spiritual and social fabric of daily life.
Colonization introduced a foreign poison: the concept of “deservingness.” It brought the idea that care must be transactional, that resources should be gated, and that charity is a benevolent gift from the powerful to the weak, rather than a horizontal responsibility between equals.
When we speak of Mutual Aid today, we are not inventing something new; we are grasping for the severed roots of a way of life that was stolen. We are attempting to decolonize our interactions and reject the hyper-individualism that capitalism forces upon us. Therefore, when a modern “mutual aid” group acts with hostility rather than generosity, they are not just being rude—they are perpetuating the colonial legacy of policing survival. To practice true mutual aid, we must first honor those who mastered it, acknowledge the violence that disrupted it, and commit ourselves to unlearning the cruelty of the colonizer.
As an Irish woman, someone whose family was also forced to assimilate to survive in the United States after fleeing Ireland because of the United Kingdom’s atrocities committed on our land and on our people, same atrocities forced by some of our own, history and culture are deep rooted in trauma and fear. Struggling with my own whiteness, with my own identity, with my knowledge of what colonialism and the very idea of how so much if not all of, *gestures around* this, will always come back to this history. To these moments in history. To the triumph and praising of murder, torture, sexual abuse, plagues, wars, conquest… thank you for your words, they leave me feeling less alone always.
When we forget our ancestral history, he are easily indoctrinated into the colonizer ideology. Often a willing and complicit participant. Myself included when I was ignorant to it.
I am with you 100% on this. As a white person, I feel a tremendous amount of guilt for what has happened with our indigenous people. When I first heard about the "Indian Schools" I was horrified. As a mother, I can empathize (I also had a child stolen from me) with that grief and trauma and I struggle with how to repay the debt we owe them (not to mention the trauma of the slaves brought here against their will).
I have been embarrassed to be white because of what my ancestors have done.
I know no amount of sympathy or how hard I say "sorry" can EVER make up for the atrocities committed against them, but I offer it up, anyway. I wish I could do something more.
Excellent piece; thank you for putting words to what so many of us feel.
Far be it for me to manage or worse dictate another adult's emotions. But, try not to feel guilt, join me in celebrating and amplifying Indigenous voices and spaces. Be a co-conspirator rather than an "ally". And do as I do: shut up and listen, we as white folks cannot understand what the BIPOC experience is in this country. And most of us can't even empathize because the narrative is written by white folks for white folks. Perhaps grab a copy of Howard Zinn "A people's history of the United states" and learn the "losing" side's perspective. He's also "white" people, and Gonzo of the first order.
My family has been invited to Thanksgiving at a black friend's house and we are going to go. Her exact words were "You get your babies and come to my house and experience a Black Thanksgiving." I'm excited and looking forward to the food, the people (we've been friends for 6 years and I'm well aquainted with her family) and whatever customs they have. My kids are looking forward to the food and other kids haha.
But I intend to listen and observe. And enjoy all the food! 😁
A little taste of my next article coming out on Thursday. It's actually about Mutual Aid for this month's issue of the underground tribune.
As we navigate this season, often sanitized under the banner of “Thanksgiving,” we must pause to observe Truthsgiving. We cannot honestly discuss the concept of community support without first acknowledging the brutal machinery of settler-colonialism that sought to dismantle the sophisticated societies already thriving on Turtle Island.
The myth of the “First Thanksgiving” serves to whitewash a history of genocide, displacement, and the systematic erasure of Indigenous culture. But what was also attacked in this process was a profound, pre-existing structure of survival: Mutual Aid. Long before European theorists penned essays on the evolutionary benefits of cooperation, Indigenous nations were living it.
From the Potlatch ceremonies of the Pacific Northwest to the kinship networks of the Plains, Indigenous communities possessed robust, sophisticated systems of resource redistribution. In these societies, poverty was not a moral failing of the individual, but a failure of the community—an impossibility in a circle where wealth was measured not by what you hoarded, but by what you gave away. Survival was a collective mandate, woven into the spiritual and social fabric of daily life.
Colonization introduced a foreign poison: the concept of “deservingness.” It brought the idea that care must be transactional, that resources should be gated, and that charity is a benevolent gift from the powerful to the weak, rather than a horizontal responsibility between equals.
When we speak of Mutual Aid today, we are not inventing something new; we are grasping for the severed roots of a way of life that was stolen. We are attempting to decolonize our interactions and reject the hyper-individualism that capitalism forces upon us. Therefore, when a modern “mutual aid” group acts with hostility rather than generosity, they are not just being rude—they are perpetuating the colonial legacy of policing survival. To practice true mutual aid, we must first honor those who mastered it, acknowledge the violence that disrupted it, and commit ourselves to unlearning the cruelty of the colonizer.
https://theundergroundtribune.substack.com/
I'm looking forward to reading the whole thing when it is published!
As an Irish woman, someone whose family was also forced to assimilate to survive in the United States after fleeing Ireland because of the United Kingdom’s atrocities committed on our land and on our people, same atrocities forced by some of our own, history and culture are deep rooted in trauma and fear. Struggling with my own whiteness, with my own identity, with my knowledge of what colonialism and the very idea of how so much if not all of, *gestures around* this, will always come back to this history. To these moments in history. To the triumph and praising of murder, torture, sexual abuse, plagues, wars, conquest… thank you for your words, they leave me feeling less alone always.
When we forget our ancestral history, he are easily indoctrinated into the colonizer ideology. Often a willing and complicit participant. Myself included when I was ignorant to it.
*we are