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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Ruth Wilde, national coordinator of the Inclusive Church

Good morning.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in the US. A day when many people we know and love across the pond will celebrate what they see as the beginnings of their nation. God provided for them as they settled in a new world. They could be happy and build families and a life away from persecution in England.

So the story goes anyway. Back in 2011, I joined a two-week delegation to Grassy Narrows First Nation in Ontario, Canada with the charity Community Peacemaker Teams. Although it is true that Canada has a slightly different history to the US when it comes to indigenous peoples, the similarities are greater than the differences. My delegation in 2011 was the first time I’d ever met any indigenous people and it was the first time I’d really heard a different story to the one you heard at the beginning.

For indigenous people, Thanksgiving is a very difficult holiday. They were there before the settlers arrived but were nearly wiped out through a combination of fighting for territory and diseases brought from Europe – diseases which their bodies had never encountered before and so could not resist. The suffering of indigenous people continues today - in generational trauma, in poverty and addiction problems due to that trauma, and in racist policies.

Thanksgiving has so many wonderful aspects to it – the idea of giving thanks to the ‘Great Spirit’ (as indigenous people call God) for everything the earth provides is something we can all get on board with, but old wrongs must be righted and indigenous people must be listened to for Thanksgiving to be redeemed and celebrated afresh.

God of redemption, we pray to you that old wounds will be healed and justice will triumph. We give thanks to you for all that the earth provides, even through the darkest times of the winter.

Amen.