What are the United States’ foundational myths? Who created them, and who do they erase and harm? For the past 52 years, United American Indians of New England (UAINE) and supporters have gathered on so-called Thanksgiving Day in Plymouth, Massachusetts, to ask these questions, confront settler myth

Protesters will gather on Cole’s Hill on so-called Thanksgiving Day this year just as they have for the past 52 years. Key issues to be addressed include the potential overturn of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA); Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit People (MMIWG2S); the ongoing anti-colonial struggle in Puerto Rico; and clemency for longtime Native American political prisoner Leonard Peltier.

As Moonanum James, son of Wamsutta Frank James and the late co-leader of UAINE, said to the crowd at the 2019 National Day of Mourning:

“We will continue to gather on this hill until corporations and the U.S. military stop polluting the Earth. Until we dismantle the brutal apparatus of mass incarceration. We will not stop until the oppression of our Two-Spirit siblings is a thing of the past. When the homeless have homes. When children are no longer taken from their parents and locked in cages. When the Palestinians reclaim the homeland and the autonomy Israel has denied them for the past 70 years. When no person goes hungry or is left to die because they have little or no access to quality health care. When insulin is free. When union busting is a thing of the past. Until then, the struggle will continue.”