PFM: Practicing Everyday Reverence and Thanks

I wrote a piece for the Portland Farmers Market blog & newsletter this year. I really enjoyed writing it. I’ve been thinking a lot about what it is to be a Sinixt person. I’ve been thinking about what I was taught and then what was inherently in me. There are pieces of me I was seeking to be taught, behaviors and world views. What I learned from Elders and friends instead was not new behavior, but instead new words and visibility to the pieces of me that have always been.

I have always had reverence for all living things. I have lived much my life with fierce intent.

What follows are some of my thoughts on Thanks Giving, from my point of view, we have much to be thankful for all year round, for all our lives. It’s as much a daily practice as it is a singular commercialized holiday in the settler state of America.

“This year we’ll be deprived of large tables full of food that are crowded by family and friends. I’ve always enjoyed sitting quietly in a room full of cheer. Unfortunately alongside the cheer, for many years now, Thanksgiving in the midst of National Native American Heritage Month feels like a cruel ironic joke.

For a little over 60 years my tribe, the Sinixt or the Arrow Lakes, were considered extinct. I grew up knowing I was Native, but not allowed to ask further questions or share this fact about myself. I learned the prevalent myth that Benjamin Franklin had wanted the Turkey, Native to the Americas, to be the National Bird, and grew up acting out the classic grade school myth of the pioneers being saved from starvation by the noble Savage. Even in that story the specifics of where that cornucopia of food came from was obscured, erased, silenced, much like my identity. No good deed goes unpunished as they say. There’s always much to be thankful for, I am thankful for the sacrifices made so that my existence could be realized. I am thankful for resilient, bold, strong ancestors who survived famine, persecution, pandemics, and colonization. You, reader, no doubt have family not so long ago and so long forgotten to thank for surviving similar burdens. I’m thankful for sweet, tangy berries, savory squash, garlic sauteed greens and all the nutrition the world provides that asks so little in return. At x̌ast sq̓it (hast squeit), Good Rain, we farm in reverence, we give our thanks everyday, in practice, presence, intention.”