10/12/2026
🍂🪶 Canadian Thanksgiving: A Little History, an Indigenous Perspective, and What This Day Means to Me. ❤️
I was asked to share what Canadian Thanksgiving is really about, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to share a little history, some teachings, and my own personal perspective as a Métis woman.
First, let's talk about the history.
Canadian Thanksgiving is different from American Thanksgiving. Its history is largely connected to European harvest celebrations, religious traditions, and giving thanks for survival and abundance.
One of the earliest recorded European thanksgiving ceremonies in what is now Canada took place in 1578, when English explorer Martin Frobisher and his crew gave thanks after surviving a dangerous voyage in the Arctic.
Over the centuries, different European settlers brought their own harvest traditions. Thanksgiving became a national holiday in 1879, and in 1957, the second Monday in October was officially established as the annual date.
But here's something important that often gets left out of our history books.
Indigenous peoples were already here.
Long before Europeans arrived, Indigenous Nations across Turtle Island had their own ceremonies, seasonal gatherings, feasts, prayers, and ways of giving thanks to the land, the animals, the waters, the Creator, and their ancestors.
We didn't need colonization to teach us gratitude.
Gratitude was already part of our teachings, our ceremonies, and our relationships with the natural world. Different Nations have their own distinct traditions, but honouring the gifts of Creation has been practised for generations.
🪶 So why don't some Indigenous people celebrate Thanksgiving?
Because for many, the holiday represents something much more complicated than turkey dinners and family gatherings.
It can be a reminder of colonization, stolen lands, broken treaties, forced assimilation, residential schools, the destruction of cultural practices, and generations of families who were separated from their languages, ceremonies, and communities.
While Canada celebrates abundance and gratitude, many Indigenous families are still living with the consequences of policies that attempted to erase who we are.
And that is something we cannot simply overlook.
Not every Indigenous person feels the same way about Thanksgiving. Some celebrate it, some refuse to acknowledge it, and others are finding ways to reclaim the day through their own cultural teachings.
And that brings me to where I stand.
I'm somewhere in the middle.
I'm still learning. I'm still healing. And I'm still working on decolonizing my own thinking.
Because here's the thing...
I grew up with certain traditions. I grew up knowing that around this time of year, families gathered, food was prepared, and people sat together to share a meal.
And even when you begin understanding the colonial history behind certain holidays, it doesn't mean those childhood memories and family traditions suddenly disappear.
It's not always as simple as deciding one day that you're never going to participate again.
Sometimes decolonization means examining what we've been taught, questioning why we do certain things, and deciding what those traditions will mean to us moving forward.
And that's exactly what I'm doing.
❤️ So yes, I prepare a feast. But my reasons are my own.
I feast to honour my ancestors.
I feast to give thanks for my family, my children, and the generations who came before me.
I give thanks for my spirit, my healing journey, my Elders, my teachings, and the ceremonies that have helped guide me through some of the darkest moments of my life.
I give thanks for the land that continues to provide for us.
I give thanks for the changing seasons, because every season brings teachings about life, death, renewal, and the importance of balance.
And perhaps most importantly...
I give thanks for the resistance of my people.
For the ancestors who refused to surrender their identities.
For the people who protected our ceremonies when practising them was forbidden.
For the Elders who carried our knowledge through generations of oppression.
For those who fought so that people like me could reconnect with our cultures, practise our ceremonies, and proudly say who we are today.
Because without their resistance, I wouldn't have the opportunities I have today to reclaim those parts of myself.
🪶 And I believe two truths can exist at the same time.
I can acknowledge the painful history of colonization while still being grateful for the life I have today.
I can reject the erasure of Indigenous history while still gathering my family around a table.
I can question colonial traditions while creating meaningful traditions of my own.
And I can celebrate the changing seasons without celebrating colonization.
Those things are not contradictions. They are part of my journey toward reclaiming what this time of year means to me.
I'm also teaching my son that gratitude isn't something we practise once a year.
It's something we carry with us every day.
It's in how we treat the land, how we respect the animals, how we honour our ancestors, how we care for one another, and how we remember those who made sacrifices so that we could be here.
So today, when my family gathers around our table, we aren't celebrating the colonization of Indigenous peoples.
We're celebrating life, survival, family, culture, resistance, and another season of being here.
And I'm still learning what that looks like for me.
I don't expect every Indigenous person to agree with how I approach this holiday, and that's okay. We all have our own experiences, teachings, and relationships with our histories.
But I do believe we need to make room for these conversations.
Because decolonization isn't always about throwing everything away.
Sometimes it's about understanding where something came from, recognizing the harm connected to it, and consciously choosing a different meaning for ourselves and the generations we're raising.
Today, I choose gratitude without forgetting history.
I choose remembrance without surrendering joy.
And I choose to honour my ancestors by continuing to live, learn, heal, resist, and carry our teachings forward.
That is what our fall feast means to me. ❤️🪶🍂
I'm curious: Do you celebrate Thanksgiving traditionally, do you observe a fall harvest feast, or have you chosen not to celebrate at all? I'd love to hear your perspectives, especially from other Indigenous families.
