Workshop: Inviting the Truth to Join You at Your Thanksgiving Table

We all know the story passed down from the white supremist viewpoint about the first Thanksgiving. If it was ever true, it was certainly an exception to what our white forebears did to the Indigenous people who first lived on this land. While it is very important to many of us to engage the ritual of giving thanks and expressing gratitude for what we have in our lives on this holiday, it is also important we all learn to sit with this larger truth. But how do we go beyond an intellectual understanding of this truth and live with this uncomfortable reality so deeply that it transforms us?

Join this workshop with Pastor Jim Bear Jacobs of Mn Council of Churches, and First Universalist member Patrick Dougherty to learn and explore how we as a faith community can become more grounded and embodied in ourselves and with each other so that we can hold these difficult truths not just in our heads, but also in our hearts and bodies so they can change our everyday lives.

As we build our capacity to hold these truths more fully and more deeply, we increase our ability to work with the natural feelings that make us want to turn away, of feeling overwhelmed, guilt and shame and many other feelings that come up when we try to live in and create a society with a more just relationship to the land and Indigenous people in our community. Alone we can’t, but together we can.

There is no charge to attend, but freewill donations will be collected.

Registration is requested for planning purposes, but not required. Sign up here!

Jim Bear Jacobs is a member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation, and has degrees in Pastoral Studies and Christian Theology and has served various churches. He is a cultural facilitator in the Twin Cities and works to raise the public’s awareness of American Indian causes and injustices. He is a convener of “Healing Minnesota Stories,” a committee dedicated to creating events of dialogue and education particularly within faith communities.

Patrick Dougherty is a psychologist, a Vietnam veteran, and member of an international group dedicated to creating methods and protocols to help communities heal from unprocessed collective traumas. His personal and professional work now focuses on helping himself and other white Americans find ways to process the price of white privilege on other groups and themselves and to find ways to actually live in a world of peace, liberty and justice for all.