In our November adult education Seeker Series, we will explore Thanksgiving: Right Relationship with Native People. We will share the Thanksgiving address of the Haudenosaunee, who are delighted for everyone to join in or create your own. We'll then briefly go over some Quaker history of friendship and forced assimilation, focusing on local tribes and the Quaker boarding school at Tunesassa (Quaker Bridge), NY (1816-1831), and Native American perspectives on Thanksgiving followed by some discussion. Then we will close with consideration of Buffalo Friends Meeting writing a Land Acknowledgement.

Resources:

• Watch The Indian Boarding Schools and Pathways toward Healing (first 10 minutes of linked video)

• Read Quaker Indian Boarding Schools: Facing Our History and Ourselves from Friends Journal (pdf, 5 pages)

• View friendspeaceteams.org/trr and scroll down to Resources and Actions / Land Acknowledgements for Quaker resources.

• New York Yearly Meeting Land Acknowledgement

• Harvest Ceremony study guide from National Museum of the American Indian (pdf, 4 pages)

• Indigenous People of Western New York from Partnership for the Public Good Buffalo (pdf, 23 pages)

• History professor David Silverman’s talk about his book This Land is Their Land from CSPAN.