Indigenous Peoples Day 2025

I spent Thanksgiving 2023 at my daughter’s home in New Jersey with both of my kids. I’ll won’t post that picture because I do not want to distract the image below of the brave people who lived on this land, this excellent article, and the main point of my message.

I am accustomed to living in a land where some strive to remember the beautiful people who once lived there, and where tribes continue to work towards survival. It is NOT a perfect system, by any means, and made worse through hateful leaders like Trump. But that Thanksgiving in New Jersey was heartbreaking. In all my travels, throughout the East Coast–north and south from New England through almost the tip of Florida–you see very few remnants of the honorable people who cared for the land before we ripped it away. It’s a shame. It’s a disgrace, and it is the best reminder we have of how we committed genocide for our own power.

We are making the same mistakes again. Believing we have a right to take mothers from their children, fathers from their families, and babies from their safety. Shame on the US for this deportation system. Wasting millions while people starve when we could be finding legal means to keep good people here.

The Dakota: Minnesota’s first people

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: ESTIMATED NUMBERS FROM THE SLAUGHTERhttps://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-12-2025