Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving

Iroquois History and Legends

Andrew James Cotter

Canadian History, Iroquois, History, North American History, First Nations, Religion & Spirituality, American History, Education, Six Nations, Native America, Christianity, Native American, Indian History, Colonial History, Haudenosaunee

4.8 • 697 Ratings

🗓️ 6 October 2018

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There is no Thanksgiving Day in Haudenosaunee society. Instead it is a lifestyle that needs to be put into practice on a daily basis. In this short supplemental we cover a traditional Mohawk prayer of Thanksgiving that is recited at gatherings and celebrations.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The Hello everyone. Welcome to Iroquois History and Legends. This is Andrew.
0:31.1	I just wanted to do a short bonus episode for you today. Since it is Thanksgiving week in the United
0:36.8	States, I wanted to talk to you about what Thanksgiving means in the context of the Six Nations.
0:43.7	In our culture, we celebrate Thanksgiving as a yearly holiday in which we gorge ourselves on food, watch football, and then stand in lines, shoving people out of the way to buy
0:55.6	stuff for ourselves at sale and discount prices. To members of the Houdinashone, however,
1:01.6	Thanksgiving is a lifestyle, a mindset. It's not about being thankful for one day a year, but every
1:08.2	day. Whenever a gathering of people takes place for a meeting or
1:12.4	celebration, they always participate in reciting a prayer of Thanksgiving. A week ago Sunday was
1:19.9	Treaty Day here in Canandaigua, and of course they gave this same Thanksgiving prayer at the ceremony.
1:27.1	The prayers mainly cover the people being
1:29.5	grateful to the great spirit for all he has created and calling out the
1:33.4	things of this natural world that help people live and thrive. But of course
1:37.9	I'm not mocking anybody's way to celebrate Thanksgiving. Every different
1:42.6	family celebrates in a different way, and I'm not saying
1:45.3	that any one culture is better than the other. The point of this supplemental episode is just to show
1:50.6	you what the members of the Six Nations do when they come together. And that's all. It just gives
1:56.5	us a slightly better glimpse into their culture and their day-to-day way of thinking that you really can't get from a history book.
2:06.9	As you can tell from our show, familial symbolism plays a big role in discussing things in the natural world.
2:15.0	You will notice that this is pretty prominent when we talk about our legends episodes,
2:18.8	how they refer to things like our Mother Earth or Grandmother the Moon or The Three Sisters.
2:25.9	Their thinking is that people are part of creation and therefore all things that are from the
2:32.8	creator are good and a part of our personal family.
	...

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