Thanksgiving Day & Sunday Spirit Practice : Renewing our Web

My body has been buzzing recently for reasons I do and do not understand. Music that usually soothes and calms me feels too overstimulating and masks the sounds I need of the wind, earth, & water. I find that I must be out of doors with feet or hands on the Earth. Engaging my body with the bigger body of the world. For the pulsing to find its lightning rod. This energy feels like maybe it is my body’s longing to let go of feeling lost & apart; my body asking to be alive in a way that has been largely drained by our not-a-culture culture. Through oppression of spirit both enacted and reacted to, perpetrated and received—both ways—the result is that we carry a profound loss within ourselves. The end sum is still empty. So I find myself here, desperate to put my hands on the soil, open my heart to be witnessed and bear witness and say Yes, I believe in You, yes, I thank you, YES I want you, YES I love you, and hear Her say back “Trust is the opposite of fear.”

Next week is Thanksgiving, Black Friday, & Native American Heritage Day. Thanksgiving is a holiday I have grown up with, celebrated, and not thought to unmask. In my growing up context, curiosity about difficult subjects was not celebrated and was often buried. Yet, as my love for the Earth and all our people is further revealed, I am leaning into how to evolve.

Thanksgiving’s origin story is deeply decontextualized in the way most of America is taught and celebrates. Our Indigenous Family knows this—probably many of you know this. Thanksgiving’ portrayal is thick with hypocrisy and lying by omission; it esteems a story of positivity while glossing over the centuries of oppression and genocide. The decontextualized story celebrates the welcome and generosity of the Wampanoag people: sharing food and teaching the life-giving skills of Native agriculture to arriving European settlers. However, the omitted truth is that these same receiving settlers then stole from the Wampanoag people, raided their gravesites that same year; and that American policy has focused on eradication and genocide of the many, unique Indigenous tribes of this land and continues to undercut and refuse restoration of their agency.  It is a tradition of false promise with the original stewards of this land. It is a tradition that covertly celebrates the robbing of others’ life-giving traditions and culture. Native American Heritage Day is the day that follows—most of us know it as Black Friday. I want to do this better. (Some other ideas how: https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/resources/First-Thanksgiving-How-Can-We-Tell-a-Better-Story)

A few years ago, when Robin was just 1, I heard a call within myself (which I tried to ignore at first) to celebrate the revolutions of the Earth through dance, song, and in community. It was late November, and I felt myself unqualified for the task, but the calling would not leave me alone. Now, 4 years later, I have held and co-created gatherings in service of this. And this year, what I know as “Thanksgiving” wants to be wound into these Thanksgiving for the Earth. This potent time past Samhain, All Hallow’s Eve, the Day of the Dead, is time ripe with the energy of releasing, honoring, accessing hidden information in preparation for Winter’s restorative womb.

I wish to invite you to be on the Earth together intentionally, bringing our generosity and gratitude, and cultivating our curiosity to know our places as stewards of the Earth. When we hold the feeling of appreciation inside ourselves there is a warming and an opening that happens; we can expand our truth from there; we can expand who (& what) we include in our community: more and more of our living Earth.

On the ground in Humboldt County, I invite you to gather with me for a Thanksgiving practice & walk Thursday November 28th at 10:30am. This will be the first of 5 walks held in preparation for the time of deep renewal that the Solstice summons.

The intention is…

• To hold ourselves as part of the body of the Land
• To give & receive thanks from this place
• To practice being in community in a way that is restorative, life-giving, and surprising
• To practice regulating our nervous systems together

If you are not in Humboldt County, I encourage you to join with fellow neighbors, a friend, or simply in the community of the Land to walk with the intentions above, allowing for quiet, allowing for unprescribed song singing or movement to come, to allow yourself to see and be seen, and walk with your feet on the land in gratitude for all the Land provides us and grieve what the Land endures.

Walks will be held Thursday, November 28th followed by 4 Sunday Spirit Walks: Dec 1, 8, 15, & 22. I invite you to attend as many as you are able. Each walk will start at 10:30am and go for approximately 90 minutes. For our first walk we will gather at the intersection of School Road & Fischer Avenue in Mckinleyville (next to the big field across from the corner market and right next to the Hammond Trail). December Sunday Walk Locations will be updated on this page. Send me a message if you wish to receive an update by email or text.

Walks will include…

• Quiet
• Moving our bodies or Song singing/listening
• Honoring the beings we encounter with the land who are our kin
• Acknowledging what is lost and being lost
• Seeding our gratitude

A suggested donation of $5-20 is appreciated; no one is turned away due to cost.

Questions email me indercoppola at the g-mail place.