Tomorrow many of us will gather to celebrate Thanksgiving. We hope that you and your family have a chance to spend time together to reflect and enjoy each other's company.

Thanksgiving for some is a holiday of celebration. For others it is a day of mourning. As you gather over the weekend, we hope you take time on Friday, November 26, to celebrate and recognize Native American Heritage Day. At Speak for the Trees, we often begin our meetings with a land acknowledgement as a way to honor the indigenous communities of Boston, Massachusetts, and the United States. We are reprinting it below and hope that these words, in their own small way, enlarge our sense of shared humanity and equity.

We acknowledge the native land on which we stand and that the sacred land where we are meeting today has been a site of human activity for over 13,000 years. This land is the territory of the Massachusett and their neighbors the Wampanoag, and Nipmuc Peoples, who have stewarded this land for hundreds of generations. We are grateful to have the opportunity to meet here today. We extend our respect to citizens of these Nations and their ancestors who have lived here for over five hundred generations, and to all Indigenous people. We also affirm that this acknowledgement is insufficient. It does not undo the harm that has been done and continues to be perpetrated now against Indigenous people, their land and their water. Our work is committed, in part, to dismantle the systems and heal the pain from this history.

As we reflect about this past year and everything we are grateful for, we would like to thank all of our supporters who continue to make our work possible. If you missed our Annual Celebration last week, we invite you to watch a recording to see everything we have accomplished together. A big thank you to our awardees for joining us: Crane Ledge Coalition, Code 4 Community, TreeEastie, and our two teens - Skylar and Miriam. You'll want to hear their amazing stories and accomplishments!