In this video, Mohawk language professor Ryan DeCaire and Mohawk food leader Chandra Maracle offer the Haudenosaunee Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen or Thanksgiving Address, a traditional offering of greetings and gratitude to the natural world, in Mohawk and English. At the Earth to Tables website, you can read the text in both languages, with illustrations by Tuscarora artist Rick Hill. I first learned about the thanksgiving Addess in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. She says when she asked Onondaga Faithkeeper Oren Lyons permission to write about it, he told her, “It’s supposed to be shared, otherwise, how can it work? We’ve been waiting five hundred years for people to listen. If they’d understood the Thanksgiving then, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

May we be truly thankful.

Wendy Claire Barrie is the author of Faith at Home: A Handbook for Cautiously Christian Parents