Mama Donna's "Thanksgiving on Turtle Island"

 

 

Mama Donna Henes , {9/19/1945~ 9/21/2024} urban shaman , author of numerous books in my bookcase.  Really the most often reread books my the shelves,   

 . Eustace Robinsion Conway IV {September 15, 1961)  the steward of Turtle Island

Thanksgiving on Turtle Island 🌽

Donna Henes

 · Thu, Nov 24, 2022 at 9:03 AM

Inspiration for Personal & Planetary Transformation 11.24.2022 Greetings to my all my spirit elations, This is The Moon of Cold, Waniyetu Wi to the Lakota. It is also Native American Heritage Month.   Thanksgiving on Turtle Island At the close of the growing season in Autumn, people, like squirrels, like ants, like bees, get busy gathering the great bounty of the land. We forage and harvest, hunt and herd; industriously amassing the abundance proffered by the earth, water, and sky. After the toil, the patient tending of the soil, the months of work and worry, we are ready and relieved to collect the crop and the kill. Hi hianai hu! Here on my field Corn comes forth, My child takes it and runs, Happy.   Here on my field Squash comes forth. My wife takes it and runs, Singing. - Papago Song of the Corn Dance   We set about preparing it, preserving it, salting it, saving it, packing it away for future use, making feverish haste in the race against the coming cold. But, first, before we store it, horde it for the hard times ahead, we take the time to glory in its goodness. With grateful prayers of thanksgiving we acknowledge our precious fortune, and gorge ourselves and the god/desses, too, with fabulous feasts of plenty.   Harvest festivals are global. They represent the successful completion of another fertile cycle. Another season of life and growth come full circle. Another round. In agricultural societies the annual cycles are counted from sowing to scything. The cycle from birth to slaughter is followed by the keepers and stalkers of stock and game. And the season starting with the spawning and culminating in the running of the salmon, the cod, the squid, the whale, is observed by those who fish to live.      Ultimately, all harvest festivities celebrate one more season of our tenuous survival. We have managed to live through another year. Another fertile period has passed in our favor. We have been lucky. One way or another, we will have the wherewithal to sustain ourselves through another winter, another dry spell, another monsoon, yet another tricky test of time.   Our own familiar fall festival of Thanksgiving is an amalgam of Old and New World harvest celebrations. The pilgrims brought the Harvest Home Festivals of the Ingathering from England with them. And very little else. By the time the Mayflower landed in Massachusetts in December of 1620, all of their supplies had been depleted at sea. They had little left with which to survive the first winter. Indeed, by spring, only 55 of the original 102 settlers were still alive. And they had no seeds to plant. It was only through the generous sponsorship of the indigenous Wampanoag people that they would establish a foothold and ultimately thrive. Thrive and spread like the native vines, sending out endless shoots of sticky tendrils that strangled everything they touched.   The locals introduced the colonists to the domestic foods of Turtle Island (a common original name for the Western Hemisphere) and taught them cultivation techniques. By the following autumn, the pilgrims' first crops of corn, squash, and pumpkins were planted, tended, and harvested successfully. A major celebration was called for. So the Indian hosts were invited as guests and ninety attended, joining the fifty-some whites.   Abundant stores of cranberries and oysters were collected, countless deer and turkey shot. Four English women and two teenage girls did all the cooking for the giant banquet. As in the Harvest Home tradition and also that of the great Autumn Green Corn Festivals celebrated by the agricultural tribes of the North, Southeast, and Southwest of Turtle Island, they sat down together to eat in fellowship and true Thanks Giving. Games were played. Corn was popped. Arms were displayed. The rest is history.  I liked the whites I liked the whites I gave them fruits I gave them fruits I am crying for thirst  I am crying for thirst All is gone - I Have nothing to eat.   - Arapaho Ghost Dance Song Today, though we are well fed, we hunger and thirst for the spirit of reverence and respect for the world, which sustains us. But in our push for ascendancy, for power, for dominance - over the land, over each other, over the odds, over Mother Nature Herself - we have poisoned our providence and sullied the source of our own livelihood. Our very ability to live at all.   And what of our children? Our grandchildren. The great grandchildren of us all? What have we saved for them? For the next seven generations. For all the inhabitants of the Universe.   This Thanksgiving let us remember that we are part of the potentially functional family of humanity. We are all kin, clan, mishpocheh in Yiddish and All My Relations Mitakuye Oyasinas, as the the Lakota say. For this, let us be thankful.   Greeting All My Relations Aho Mitakuye Oyasin... All my relations. I honor you in this circle of life with me today. I am grateful for this opportunity to acknowledge you in this prayer... To the Creator, for the ultimate gift of life, I thank you. To the mineral nation that has built and maintained my bones and all foundationsof life experience,  I thank you. To the plant nation that sustains my organs and body and gives me healing herbs for sickness, I thank you. To the animal nation that feeds me from your own flesh and offers your loyal companionshipin this walk of life, I thank you. To the human nation that shares my path as a soul upon the sacred wheel of Earthly life, I thank you. To the Spirit nation that guides me invisibly through the ups and downs of life and for carrying the torch of light through the Ages. I thank you. To the Four Winds of Change and Growth,  I thank you.    You are all my relations, my relatives, without whom I would not live. We are in the circle of life together, co-existing, co-dependent, co-creating our destiny. One, not more important than the other. One nation evolving from the other and yet each dependent upon the one above and the one below. All of us a part of the Great Mystery. Thank you for this Life. - Lakota Sioux Prayer Bountiful Blessings of the harvest, Blessings Abound! xxMama Donna