I enjoy the holiday for a few simple reasons: food, friends, and family gathering with no other agenda. No shopping, no religious rituals — just people coming together. Everyone is welcome at the table.
That said, I also recognize the complicated and painful history of Thanksgiving, especially here on the Island, where I grew up alongside classmates and friends who were members of the Wampanoag tribe. Many American holidays are romanticized, perhaps because the real history — filled with brutality, displacement, and cultural destruction — is harder to sit with. What happened during European colonization is no exception on this land.
Since I can acknowledge this truth, I also have to admit what I cannot know: what the holiday feels like from within the native community.
I reached out to Juli Vanderhoop, with whom I grew up, and whose son played baseball with my boys. I asked about this American holiday rooted in colonial history, and how her community experiences it today.
Juli is an Aquinnah Wampanoag, a tribal elder, and the heartbeat of the small town. Orange Peel Bakery is an example of that, a year-round gathering spot for her delicious, creative, baked goods, her pizza nights, and a conduit between the Wampanoag people and the rest of the Island community.
Juli is also a select board member, and serves on several boards, including the Martha’s Vineyard Community Foundation. She carries a smile that spreads up to her sparkly, bright eyes. She speaks thoughtfully and patiently, even when the subjects are tough.
Juli was joined in the kitchen at Orange Peel Bakery by her two great-nieces, sisters NaDaizja Bolling, director of the Aquinnah Cultural Center, and Tysonnae Aiguire-Bolling, who also works at the Aquinnah Cultural Center, and is an apprentice with the Wôpanâak language reclamation project, tribal artist, Eastern blanket dancer, community organizer, and environmental justice advocate.
Both sisters returned to the place where they felt most at home, where their father’s parents had always summered, and where their mother and their tribal ancestors were from.
The three women were making Concord grape jelly from grapes found on tribal lands. I asked how they feel this time of year.
“That’s a good question,” Juli said. She continued, “Well,this is not our holiday. This is a strange day. We may take a swim in the ocean, and there’s always work, especially in the bakery.”
I asked if there are resentments within the community. Juli said, “I wonder how many people get it. When my kids were in school, they were asked, ‘What were your people doing on this holiday?’”
She continued, “Why would you single my children out?”
Speaking of the teachers, “This is not our time to speak, why would you ask that?” Juli wondered, seemingly more curious than angry.
NaDaizja and Tysonnae agreed. The sisters went to elementary school in Marblehead. NaDaizja remembers, “They taught about Thanksgiving when I was about 7. The teacher said there once were ‘Indians’ and now there are no more; I raised my hand and said, ‘My mom said I am Wampanoag.’ It was dismissed and never spoken about again.”
Tysonnae remembers her class setting up a colonial village. “I was wearing a white bonnet, dressed as a Pilgrim, and my mother and father were horrified.”
Now the three women stood crowded around the pot on the stove in Juli’s small bakery kitchen. Juli carefully poured the Concord grape juice into the pot. NaDaizja stirred in the sugar, followed by Tysonnae adding the pectin. Juli showed her great-nieces how to remove the white foam as the grape mixture slowly heated up.
We began talking about the fairy tale we were all taught in elementary school, about the Pilgrims and the native Americans sitting down to dinner together.
“There are so many things wrong with that narrative,” NaDaizja said, “including that the Wampanoag people are not even acknowledged as the native participants. So even in our most devastating moments, we are being written out of history.”
She said the natives are defined as “Eastern” in the Thanksgiving story, but that is as far as the story gets.
As we continued to discuss the holiday, the three women said that gatherings are a normal and common part of their culture. Not just a few times a year, but often, and always to give thanks.
Juli chimed in, “As native people, we need to gather, all of us here on the Island and with other Eastern tribes, to give ourselves a voice. Gathering is the constant connection to one another and to our cultures.” She continued, “Gathering is the health of our community.”
There are around 1,500 enrolled Gay Head/Aquinnah Wampanoags worldwide. The tribe is, as all native tribes are, vulnerable because of so much land lost. They are fighting to be acknowledged, and for their cultural history and heritage to not disappear.
The Island is a rare case of more than 12,000 years of continuous native habitation. Today the Wampanoag tribe holds on to its small slice of the Island in Aquinnah, where they work, raise their families, educate, and gather, always giving thanks.
We Islanders need to protect, embrace, celebrate, and work to keep the original history of Martha’s Vineyard, Noepe, and its people, not just surviving, but thriving.
This article is excerpted from the Grapevine of Nov. 1. –Ed.