On 55th National Day of Mourning: Land Back, from Turtle Island to Palestine!

Plymouth, Massachusetts

The article introduces speakers using the Indigenous nation(s) they are a member of in parentheses. Speakers use the original Indigenous geographical names.

Hundreds of Indigenous activists and their allies defied wind, cold and driving rain to commemorate the 55th annual National Day of Mourning (NDOM) in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Thousands of others worldwide watched via livestream. (tinyurl.com/y6m9nnx3) Buses brought activists from Boston, Bronx and Brooklyn, New York, Portland, Maine and Western Mass.

After an opening ceremony at noon, Kisha James (Aquinnah Wampanoag and Oglala Lakota), co-leader of United American Indians of New England (UAINE), opened the rally on Cole’s Hill by describing the history of National Day of Mourning, which was first organized by her grandfather Wamsutta Frank James in 1970. 

James shattered the racist “Thanksgiving” myth, which continues to prop up the superstructure of the U.S. settler regime. The Pilgrims were not fleeing religious “persecution,” as bourgeois historians insist; they were murderous theocrats who used slave trade profits to establish their regime, first and foremost a chartered commercial enterprise, on stolen Wampanoag lands. 

The first “Thanksgiving” likewise did not happen in 1620. It was only in 1637 that Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop proclaimed a “day of thanksgiving” to celebrate the genocidal massacre of over 700 Pequot men, women and children on the banks of the Mystic River in present day Connecticut. 

 As James noted, some Wampanoag people did show charity to the Pilgrim settlers, who, utterly incompetent and ignorant of the lands they had invaded, had taken to looting Wampanoag graves for provisions. “And what did we, the Indigenous peoples of this continent get in return for this kindness?” James asked. “Genocide, the theft of our lands, the destruction of our traditional ways of life, slavery, starvation and never-ending oppression.”

We live in the time of the Pilgrims

As James described, the genocide and dispossession the Pilgrim invasion started in 1620 are ongoing. Quoting Saidiya V. Hartman, author of “Lose your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route,” James said: “‘I too live in the time of slavery, by which I mean I am living in the future created by it.’ So we too are living in the time of the Pilgrims. The settler project created by the Pilgrims did not end with the Pilgrims. The evils that the Pilgrims brought to these shores — racism, slavery, the class system, jails, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny — these evils continue to affect the people of Turtle Island [North and Central America] and beyond.” 

And, because the U.S., the settler colonial empire that dominates the genocidal system of global capitalist extraction, has its origins in Plymouth, “all settler projects worldwide, past and present, are indebted to the Pilgrims. … Until this country, this settler colonial project and all settler colonial projects are dismantled, we will continue to live in the time of the Pilgrims.”

But just as worldwide settler genocide continues to intensify, so too does Indigenous resistance worldwide — from Turtle Island to Palestine. 

James said, “Native people did not simply fade into the background, as the Thanksgiving myth said. We have survived and flourished. We have persevered. The very fact that you are here is proof that we did not vanish. Our very presence frees this land from the lies of the history books and the mythmakers. 

“We will remember and honor all of our ancestors in the struggle who went before us. We will speak truth to power, as we have been doing since the first National Day of Mourning in 1970. … In the spirit of Crazy Horse, in the spirit of Metacomet, in the spirit of Geronimo, above all, to all people who fight and struggle for real justice: We are not vanishing! We are not conquered! We are as strong as ever!”

We welcome the rain

Jean-Luc Pierite (Tunica Biloxi), President of the North American Indian Center of Boston (NAICOB) Board of Directors, praised activists, many of whom had journeyed for hours or even days, for braving the rain, which brought necessary relief to areas of Massachusetts parched by climate change-fueled drought. 

Pierite said, “We welcome the rain, we welcome the waters. But it’s a lot better for us to be out here in the rain for a few hours than what is taking place in Gaza, where refugees living in tents have suffered the flooding that has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis” caused by genocidal Zionist terror bombing, ethnic cleansing and engineered famine. “It is a lot better to be here and be able to go home. For all Indigenous people, we say we have a right to return to our homelands, and we demand an end to occupation!”

 Juan Gonzalez (Maya), a representative of the Council of Maya Elders, declared that, “We must keep struggling, fighting, working, because our creation is facing really serious dangers today. I’m not just talking about the United States. I’m talking about the whole planet, the whole Mother Earth.”

Free, free Palestine!

Lea Kayali, a Palestinian Youth Movement organizer, made explicit the solidarity that unites Palestinian resistance to the Zionist state with the other liberation struggles Indigenous peoples are fighting worldwide. “I’m so honored to be here on this Day of Mourning,” Kayali said. “Because as a Palestinian, every day for the past 419 days has been a day of mourning, knowing that the death toll [in Gaza] is likely in the hundreds of thousands. So, we are mourning with you today.”

Indigenous movements, Kayali stressed, share a common enemy: The system of imperialism and settler colonialism that justifies its genocidal theft and dispossession with fabricated narratives — be they the fable of the “First Thanksgiving” or the Zionist canard that Palestine was “a land without people.”

Kayali continued: “Genocide, the unforgivable crime, has been wrought against so many Indigenous folk. This is the bloodied history that colonizers try to cover up with stories like ‘Thanksgiving’ and ‘ Israeli independence.’ And today we reject these lies!”

Renouncing liberal platitudes, Kayali affirmed the need for Palestinians and all other oppressed Indigenous nations worldwide to resist, by any means necessary, settler genocide, “the grotesque and unnatural contortion of what we once called life. This is not the decolonization of academic polemics, nor is it the decolonization of an NGO mission statement. Nor is it the decolonization of white people’s veneer land acknowledgements,” she declared. 

“This is the decolonization of the fedayeen, of the Zapatistas, of the American Indian Movement. This is the decolonization that is threatening world order! … So let them try to steal our children, to push us from our homes, to repress our culture. They will fail, because they are in our way. The future of collective freedom is our future, a prophecy and our promise. Because nothing can stop the rising tide of resistance! Because the land knows her stewards, and we vowed to her that we will return victorious!”

Fawaz Abusharkh, co-founder of Palestinian House of New England and an organizer of the Boston Coalition for Palestine, whose 45 member organizations include UAINE, NAICOB, Workers World Party-Boston, Jewish Voice for Peace, BDS-Boston, Party for Socialism and Liberation and the Palestinian Youth Movement, urged participants, “Today and always, please strive to become the good ancestor for generations to come.” 

Free Leonard Peltier

Chali’Inaru Dones (Taíno), a member of the Confederation of Taíno Peoples, once again demanded the release of Leonard Peltier (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa), an AIM activist and the longest serving political prisoner in the U.S. As Dones explained, for 48 years Peltier has been serving a life sentence for the 1975 shootings of two FBI agents on Pine Ridge Reservation — a case that relied on fabricated evidence and racist prosecutorial misconduct. 

Peltier remains imprisoned at U.S Coleman Penitentiary in Florida, where he suffers from medical neglect and repeated lockdowns. In July, authorities turned down the 80-year-old Peltier’s latest request for parole, and Joe Biden still refuses to free him. (freeleonardpeltiernow.org)

Herbert Waters (Wampanoag) read Peltier’s annual NDOM statement. “Our spirit cannot be broken, because we are one,” Peltier wrote. “We are born of Mother Earth, woven with love, dignity and a freedom they cannot comprehend. Though they have entombed me in concrete and steel, I am a free man. They rounded up our people and put them in concentration camps. We remain a free people! … I send my love and blood as a prisoner of war within the belly of the beast to those who continue the struggle.”

The Red Nation: ‘Colonialism must die!’

Demetrius Johnson (Diné), a member of a delegation from The Red Nation collective, pledged support for the liberation of Palestine and of all other Indigenous lands. “The National Day of Mourning embodies an Indigenous counter narrative that dissolves settler lies. Today, like tongues that sharpen like iron, we will cut open colonialism and expose its rotten core,” Johnson said. 

“The humble people of the earth have spoken: there is no place for colonialism on Mother Earth. For the Earth to live, colonialism must die.” Johnson led the crowd in a chant of “From Plymouth Rock to Palestine, occupation is a crime!” (therednation.org)

After the rally on Cole’s Hill, demonstrators took over the streets of Plymouth. Chants of “Free, free Palestine,” “No Justice, No Peace,” and “City by city, town by town, we’re going to take Columbus Day down!” kept spirits buoyant despite the rain. 

At the site of “Plymouth Rock” — in reality a random pebble that sits in a sandbox behind a Roman-kitsch facade — further speeches took place. Thay-Ling Mora (Taíno) demanded the liberation of Boríken [Puerto Rico] and demanded unconditional material support in the struggle for Indigenous self-determination worldwide.

The march finished up at Post Office Square, where colonizer death squads once displayed the mutilated head of Metacomet (“King Philip”), the Wampanoag Sachem who led Indigenous resistance to genocidal settler militias during “King Philip’s War” (1675-76). Colonial authorities sent Metacomet’s dismembered limbs back to England as trophies of their genocidal war and sold his wife and children into slavery on Caribbean plantations, where overseers worked tens of thousands of captive Indigenous and African people to death. 

Years of Indigenous activism forced the Town of Plymouth to install a plaque commemorating Metacomet in 1998. Jean-Luc Pierite read the inscription. (uaine.org/settlement.htm) 

To close the rally, Reggi Alkiewicz (member of Nunatsiavut Government) emphasized the resilience of Indigenous peoples worldwide as they continue to strengthen ties of solidarity and advance in their shared struggle for ultimate liberation. “We as people of color, we as Black people, we as Indigenous people understand that come what may, we will be here to do the work of progress, of forward movement come what may, even when it’s rough.”