Looking for home in the homeland

By Hannah Herner

In school we learned that Native Americans and Pilgrims celebrated Thanksgiving together. Their descendants certainly don’t. On Thanksgiving Day, Native Americans observe National Day of Mourning instead.

National Day of Mourning started in 1970, led by Native Americans of New England demonstrating in Plymouth, Mass.

A statement from the United American Indians of New England website reads, “Participants in National Day of Mourning honor Native ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples to survive today. It is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection as well as a protest of the racism and oppression which Native Americans continue to experience.”

Albert Bender, a leader in the Nashville Native American community and member of the Cherokee tribe, says the Nashville community typically doesn’t organize a protest on Thanksgiving — they simply don’t celebrate it.

“Once the Pilgrims landed, instead of it being one of those situations where everyone lived happily ever after, it was the start of a genocide of millions of native people, the theft of land, and an assault on Native culture,” he says. “The original Thanksgiving is part of the white man mythology that has been used to give an impression of natives and pilgrims getting along.”

Just one example of the oppression and erasure that Native Americans face was the The Trail of Tears, which forcibly removed more than 16,000 Cherokee from the American South in 1838, with at least 4,000 dying along the way. Many who traveled from concentration camps near modern-day Charleston, Tennessee, stopped in Nashville for supplies on their way to Oklahoma. They crossed the Cumberland River near where Victory Memorial Bridge and the Downtown Courthouse is today.

Bender says the Trail of Tears is also used as a blanket term for any removal of Native Americans from their homeland in the Southeast, forced or not, before or after 1838. His ancestors chose to migrate earlier, avoiding the inevitable encroaching of the white settlers, he says.

Nashville also plays a role in the Trail of Tears by association with former president Andrew Jackson. He kept his home at The Hermitage just outside of Nashville when he wasn’t in the White House, which has since been converted into a museum. He was an advocate of Indian Removal and signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830 into law. This required the government to negotiate treaties with Native Americans, exchanging their land in the south for land west of the Mississippi. In the end, most were coerced.

While The Trail of Tears forced most of the Native Americans out of the Southeast, it is certainly not the end of the story of Native Americans in Tennessee. The Native American Indian Association is looking for funding for a new center, which will serve the Native American population in Tennessee, to help with jobs, medical care, and educating the public on Indian history and modern-day affairs.

“The non-native population — in particular the white population — they need to reach out to native people and become better educated and more cognizant of our struggles and how they can provide support,” Bender says.

Homeless in the homeland

A 2020 report by the National Alliance to End Homelessness found that out of 567,715 people experiencing homelessness in the United States, nearly 18,000 of them are Native American.

The report also says that Pacific Islanders and Native Americans are the most at risk of becoming homeless out of all racial/ethnic groups. Out of every 10,000 Pacific Islanders or Native Americans, 160 are homeless, as compared to the national average of 17 out of 10,000.

“Pacific Islanders and Native Americans are numerically small groups within the U.S., making it more difficult for the U.S. Census Bureau and homelessness services systems to count them accurately. Nevertheless, available data suggest they face significant challenges,” the report reads.

The American Community Survey estimates 2,053 people in Davidson County who are American Indian and Alaska Native. Bender estimates there are closer to 5,000. Nashville’s Point-in-Time count didn’t find any people who were Native American sleeping outside during the annual night-long count. Nashville’s homeless database reports seven people who identified their primary race as American Indian or Alaska Native served by street outreach programs.

This number could be affected by the transience Bender notices in the Native American population in Nashville, with some passing through and asking NAIA for assistance to meet basic needs or travel home. Still, he doesn’t know of as many experiencing homelessness as there were when he moved here in 1995. At the time, a group of Native Americans lived in tents on the Cumberland River.

Bender considers the city of Nashville to be occupying Cherokee land. He said returning to the Southeast is known as “returning to the homeland” for Cherokees. On this National Day of Mourning, Bender will simply be present on the land that was taken from his ancestors.

WAYS TO PAY RESPECT TO NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING

• Donate to local indigenous-led organizations, such as Native American Indian Association of Tennessee.

• Use Thanksgiving Day as a “teachable moment” to educate family and friends on the White myth of Thanksgiving. (as suggested by the Native American Indians of New England)

• Learn more about the Trail of Tears and other important historic events at the Tennessee History Museum’s permanent exhibition, Forging a Nation.