Devin Strong

Spirit of Peace Lutheran Church

For the last few years, I have noticed that at Lutheran gatherings, the presenters often begin by announcing that we are meeting on the ancestral land of the __________ Native American people. To be honest, this always surprises me a little because I am not as tuned as I should be to these issues or the people who used to inhabit the land where I live and work.

Google tells me the Creek, Guale, and Yamacraw tribes used to live in and around Richmond Hill. Lutherans want to make us aware of this, but we do little else to rectify it. What can we do? It has been centuries since our white European ancestors took the land from Native Americans. Lands have been legitimately bought and sold dozens of times since then. It’s not like we can give it back now.

And to whom would we give the land? Of course, the American government has made some efforts at remuneration to the remaining Indian tribes, mostly allowing Native Americans to run casinos, but allowing Natives to profit from American gambling has led to significant alcoholism and blight among Indian populations.

There have been suggestions that white Americans owe similar remuneration to black communities whose ancestors were enslaved here more than 400 years ago and whose free labor built some of the infrastructure of this country. It’s not hard to imagine how stealing slave labor and the later injustices of the Jim Crow era led to generational poverty for whole communities of people, but how do we possibly calculate what is owed and to whom would we give the money even if we could? Moreover, people living in the 21st century certainly do not feel personally responsible for sins committed hundreds of years before they were born.

They and we feel like they have earned and paid for everything that they have. There are no easy answers to these societal injustices.

I bring them up only to remind you and me where we come from. Some say that that Thanksgiving is a holiday celebrating the fact that a bunch of generous Native Americans saved a whole lot of ill-prepared European explorers from starvation, and in in response, we slaughtered them and their children. Now that is one harsh spin on all those grade school Turkey Day pageants that we all participated in!

Many of us will sit down to tables full of food and homes filled with laughter on Thanksgiving. We feel like we deserve a day off from work and a chance to gorge ourselves on mashed potatoes and stuffing. At one level, we do. We work hard; we play by the rules, and we protect our children, but at another level, we have been given far more than we realize and have been blessed beyond our imaginations. I have a colleague who likes to say, “As Americans, we were all born on third base with a jump toward home, and we pretend that we hit a triple!”

There is a lot of pain and uncertainty this year, but we still have much to be thankful for, including the motivation and the skills to work hard and accomplish things. As you carve off your favorite turkey thigh, just remember that none of us got to where we are today entirely on our own. To God be the glory. I wish you all a most blessed Thanksgiving.