Thanksgiving as a national holiday began in a federal office in 1863 at the hands of President Abraham Lincoln. Since then, its lore has evolved as if through a cruel game of telephone: a story of pilgrims and Indians and a merry feast that snaked its way from textbooks to turkey-filled tables.

This story is, plainly, a myth, one that a Berkeley event aims to not only expose, but also repair.

“Thangs Taken: Rethinking Thanksgiving,” brings together both Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, performers, activists, allies, and community members at La Peña Cultural Center to challenge and reshape the “colonial Thanksgiving narrative.” Open to all, with tickets sold on a sliding scale, the evening is centered around both celebration and healing, truth-telling and resistance, in recognition of the harms done to Indigenous people throughout history.

Thangs Taken began in 2006, when Ariel Luckey, currently the development director at Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, was craving a way to talk with the community about the truth behind Thanksgiving.

“I was … feeling this real tension every year, every time November comes around,” he said in a Zoom interview. “For me as a white person, it’s always felt uncomfortable to just kind of go through the motions without actually talking about the origins of the holiday and what it means.”

Luckey organized and produced the first event in collaboration with Corrina Gould, tribal chair of the Confederated Villages of Lisjan Nation and a director at Sogorea Te’ Land Trust. For a decade, the annual event explored — through art, music, dance, theater, film, poetry, comedy, ancestral knowledge, and oral storytelling — the complex and tragic history of both Thanksgiving and the United States’ relationship with Indigenous peoples. After a hiatus from 2016-2022, it resumed last year.

Now in its 13th iteration, Thangs Taken will come back in full force this year on Sunday, Nov. 24 from 6 to 9 p.m.

“Buy tickets early!” encouraged this year’s host, Morning Star Gali, a member of the Ajumawi band of Pit River Tribe and the executive director of Indigenous Justice. As it has every year, she and others at La Peña expect the event to sell out its 185 seats. In preparation, the organization offers an overflow room and a live stream option.

Recognition and reconciliation

Even in the birthplace of Indigenous People’s Day — in 1992, Berkeley was the first to recognize it in lieu of Columbus Day — the harmful legacies of colonization, genocide, and patriarchy persist. Thangs Taken responds not only to past wrongs but persistent issues in the present, upon the ancestral lands of the Chochenyo-speaking Lisjan Ohlone.

“Thangs Taken allows us to talk about all of these things that are not only historical but are currently happening,” said Gould in a video recorded for last year’s event. “People that are taking land back, people that are celebrating who they are in their culture even throughout all of this devastation.”

Gould will once again be part of this year’s programming, alongside a number of performers, activists, and Indigenous leaders and groups. Yuki Resistance will bring ceremony and traditional song and dance. Musical acts will include singer Desirae Harp, a member of the Onacáṭis (Mishewal Wappo) tribal nation, and SoCal Indigenous band Aztlan Underground. The lineup will also feature the Palestinian Youth Movement and Phil Albers Jr. from Save CA Salmon. More than 30 tribal nations will be represented.

Gali looks forward to the opportunity to be in community, support local land back projects, center Native voices, and “shift the narrative to a place in truth.” That includes talking about the issues relevant to Indigenous populations today to spur generational healing.

“Reconciliation isn’t possible until we’re able to be honest and have these conversations about what’s taking place,” she said. “It’s definitely bigger than Thanksgiving.”

Though she’s been involved in Thangs Taken a number of times, this year’s is especially meaningful to Gali. A special ceremony will honor the memory of Norman “Wounded Knee” DeOcampo. He was a beloved Tuolumne Miwok Elder and leader in the Native American community who often frequented the Alcatraz Sunrise Ceremonies Gali hosts on Indigenous People’s Day and the day the federal government recognizes as Thanksgiving.

Traditions new and old

For those who have built their own traditions around Thanksgiving — centered on coming together and practicing gratitude — Thangs Taken offers a kind of bridge between traditional teachings around the holiday and how to move forward more consciously. Gali called it “a time for truth telling and bravery.”

“Of course people can get attached to narratives and celebrate colonial holidays and traditions, because that is what’s familiar to them,” she said. “People can definitely change their perception and ways of thinking through education and just being open.”

Thangs Taken is also intertwined with other longstanding activist movements and Indigenous traditions around the Bay Area that have raised awareness and spurred real change. Both Gali and Gould recalled dinners organized by the American Indian Movement that took place at La Peña after the Alcatraz sunrise ceremonies. The Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, where Luckey and Gould work, was launched partially out of the work of Thangs Taken. In 2015, organizers announced the Shuumi Land Tax, a voluntary tax residents can contribute toward rematriation, the act of returning Indigenous land to Indigenous people. It was later adopted by the Alameda City Council.

“There is something irreplaceable about being in a room together, listening to story, to song, to prayer, together, in real time, in real space — feeling the energy,” said Luckey. “Events like this can be kind of medicinal, can be healing.”

This kind of impact is the beginning of a new story. Not based on a myth but built together, for everyone.

“Thangs Taken: Rethinking Thanksgiving,” will take place at the La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave., on Sunday, Nov. 24 from 6 to 9 p.m. For tickets and volunteer opportunities, visit eventbrite.com or lapena.org.