On Gratitude
It’s November, the days are shortening and the rains have come. We’ve had a few brief weeks nestled between the candy-coated spookiness of Halloween and the frantic entry to holiday season ushered in by Thanksgiving. Gratitude practices on North American soil involve a time-honored tradition of giving thanks to the world that sustains us. One of these practices is the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, also known as The Words That Come Before All Else in the Onandaga language or Greeting and Thanks to the Natural World.
The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy is a group of six indiegenous tribes whose traditional territory stretches across most of New York State and parts of Canada. For the Haudenosaunee, the practice of gratitude is an enshrined social protocol and cultural norm. Recitation of the Address is a prerequisite before every public meeting, event, negotiation, and some members choose to open every school day with the recitation. Business does not proceed until there has been an intentional accounting for and offering of gratitude to the natural world around them.
The Address begins with a calling to order:
Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as people.
It then moves to address all the natural elements essential to life: the Earth, the waters, the fish, the plants, the winds, the animals, the trees, the sun and the moon.
We now turn our thoughts to the Trees. The Earth has many families of trees who have their own instructions and uses. Some provide us with shelter and shade, others with fruit, beauty and other useful things. Many people of the world use a Tree as a symbol of peace and strength. With one mind, we greet and thank the Tree life.”
But the Address is more than simply a listing off of all that is necessary to sustain us. It also directs your attention to answering the question of “How is the world right now compared to how it should be?” It asks us to take notice of how we, as stewards of the earth, are either succeeding or failing.
We live in a culture that often breaks up the world into dualities like light and dark, good and evil, 1’s and 0’s, sweet and sour. But as Robin Wall Kimmerer notes, the duality presented in the Thanksgiving Address is that of duties and gifts, gratitude and reciprocity. It asks you what you will give back to the world in acknowledgement of all the blessings that it has given you.
As she writes in “Allegiance to Gratitude” in Braiding Sweetgrass, “you can’t listen to the Thanksgiving Address without feeling wealthy. And, while expressing gratitude seems innocent enough, it is a revolutionary idea.” An expansion of gratitude would upend much of what our current holiday season relies on, consumerism and the idea that life is better with more stuff.
However, we have the opportunity every day to radically reimagine a new world. What could we do if we center gratitude for and awareness of the natural world into our daily routines? Could the actions that come from a place of gratitude restore our relationships with each other and with the natural world that we are so deeply connected?
Practicing gratitude in the Haudenosaunee way is simple--all it requires is for you to observe and to give thanks where thanks are due. The air, the mountains, the trees, the birds. They’ve all played a role in sustaining us. Now how can we start doing our best to sustain them?
So if Tacoma Tree Foundation has anything on our Black Friday wish list, it’s this: don't just #OptOutside (thanks REI), but opt into a practice of gratitude for the life around you as well.
For a full-text version of the Thanksgiving Address, click here.