PORT ANGELES — The tribal elder walked slowly to the podium, grasping several pages and a walker with her arthritic hands.
The topic of the open mic was Thanksgiving, and she came ready to speak her mind.
“You didn’t discover this land; I didn’t misplace it,” said Monica Charles, a 63-year-old member of the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe.
“I was taking care of her; she was taking care of me.”
Charles’ poems, read at the Elwha Heritage Center in Port Angeles on Monday evening, presented a blunt rebuke of the treatment of Native Americans by Europeans and an acknowledgment that every story, including one of the nation’s most cherished holidays, has two sides.
“We fed you that first cold winter . . . You were small and friendly at first,” she continued, referring to the native people’s first encounter with the pilgrims.
“When you grew strong, you turned on us, taking more of our land, killing more of our people.”
One of half-dozen
Charles, a former American Indian Movement activist, was one of a half-dozen people who came to the heritage center to speak about the holiday.
She said she came to address the disparity in outcomes for native and white people after that first Thanksgiving.
“It’s something that’s always bothered me,” Charles said. “It’s always been overlooked, you know, what’s happened to us.”
A few other speakers also took on the colonization of America from the native perspective.
Reasons for gratitude
Others, both tribal and nontribal, spoke more about the holiday itself, reflecting on what they are thankful for and Thanksgivings of past years.
“We don’t visit much these days,” Juanita Edwards of the Lower Elwha Klallam read from a poem about the holiday. “Let’s enjoy the time we have.”
Brenda Francis, Lower Elwha Klallam spokeswoman and one of the organizers of the open mic, said Thanksgiving still evokes a wide range of feelings among native people, and the views expressed came as no surprise.
“In one sense, we all, most of us I would say . . . still celebrate [the holiday] like most Americans traditionally celebrate Thanksgiving,” she said. “But then in the other sense, it’s also a reminder of what happened to the native people many years ago.”
Yet the holiday, despite the controversial past that surrounds it, is hardly without meaning for native people, said Wendy Sampson, a Lower Elwha language teacher.
The message of giving and being thankful that was bestowed centuries ago has remained an integral part of tribal culture, Sampson said.
“We have ceremonies to show respect and give thanks,” she said. “The same with hunting, the same with vision questing.”
And it is that cultural history that Sampson said she teaches her students in the after-school program when talking about Thanksgiving.
Just like at elementary school, the young students in the tribal program make paper turkeys by tracing their hands on construction paper and tell their teacher why they are thankful.
Some of the answers are the predictable Xbox or other gaming system, but Sampson said she points to, in Klallam and English, more time-honored values: family, health, elders, “the basics you know.”
In terms of the history around the holiday, Sampson said she leaves that for others to teach.
“I’m not qualified to give my opinion on history,” she said with a laugh.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
