South Asians Living in America: Thanksgiving, Colonization, and Gratitude
By Dr. Aliya Sheriff
Since a very young age, Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday. I loved the feeling of our home filling with people and the warmth of connection. My parents created incredible feasts including Turkey infused with Indian spices, homemade cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, a rice dish of some kind, mashed potatoes, and more. Over the years, the people around the table shifted. First, we had my brother and my friends. Sometimes our friends’ parents also joined. As life changed, the guest list changed too. But the constant was our home was always full. My parents built community wherever they went. Every Thanksgiving reminded me of the power of that community, how deeply we valued it, and the gratitude we held.
As the daughter of South Asian parents who were born in Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo, I grew up with a layered understanding of migration and belonging. Many immigrant families, especially those who have experienced displacement, cling to American traditions as a way of building safety. When you’ve lost your home once, or twice, you learn quickly that belonging is not guaranteed. My parents came to America with the memory of being told they did not belong in the East African countries of their birth. So participating in American traditions like Thanksgiving wasn’t just about celebration. It was about staying safe, about integrating, about making sure their children had a rootedness they themselves were denied.
This creates a tension for many of us who grew up in these homes. We inherit the desire to belong, even when the narratives behind these traditions are painful or untrue.
Intergenerational identity means I carry different questions than my parents did. I learned they mythologized version Thanksgiving in school. The harmonious image of Pilgrims and Native Americans sharing a peaceful meal. I learned a story designed to protect a national identity rather than tell the truth. Only as I grew older did I understand that Thanksgiving is rooted in colonization and genocide. A celebration that erases the suffering and history of Indigenous people. Thanksgiving brings to light the reality of who gets to tell the story, who gets erased, and who benefits from changing the narrative.
As a psychologist, I also think about how these sanitized narratives shape identity and mental health. When we learn only the myth of Thanksgiving, we internalize a version of America that erases violence and centers the comfort of the dominant group. For immigrant children, this becomes even more complex. We are told to be grateful for being “allowed” into a country built on land that was taken. We absorb mixed messages about who is worthy, who belongs, and whose suffering is overlooked. These lessons live quietly inside us until adulthood when we finally have the language to name them.
South Asians also hold a complicated position within systems of power. We are people whose ancestors lived under colonial rule, and yet in places like East Africa, many of our families benefited from proximity to structures created by colonial powers. In America, we remain racialized minorities while sometimes benefiting from proximity to whiteness. Acknowledging Indigenous land and truth requires us to sit honestly with these tensions. While this is uncomfortable for us, discomfort is necessary for change.
As a parent, psychologist, and believer in decoloniality, I ask myself often: How do I dismantle these narratives? How do I live in a way that aligns with truth? It should feel easy because of my values yet I still get stuck. I want time with my family. I believe deeply in gratitude. I know community matters. I also know that gratitude cannot require me to ignore the truth. So I remind myself that this work is not all or nothing. I am growing and raising my son to learn alongside me.
For me, dismantling begins with awareness and action. I try to recognize where I was (and probably in some ways still am) complicit. A few years ago, I started reading age-appropriate books with my son about the truth of America. We talk about Indigenous people, about whose land we live on, and about the stories that were erased to create the ones I was taught in school. This year, we added books that explicitly name colonization. These moments feel small, but they are part of shifting a narrative that was handed to us without consent.
Awareness alone isn’t enough. As a family, we’re practicing small, intentional steps. We are learning the names of the Native nations whose land we live on, reading Indigenous authors, reframing Thanksgiving as a day of gratitude and remembrance without celebrating the myth, supporting Native-led organizations, and acknowledging both the harm and the resilience of Indigenous communities. These are not perfect solutions, but they are movement. We start to hold the voice of people who were not given a voice and those whose voices were taken from them. They teach my son that truth and gratitude can coexist, that repair is possible, and that community must be rooted in honesty.
In many ways, this work is an intergenerational journey. I carry my parents’ stories of displacement from East Africa and the inherited memory of colonization in South Asia. I also carry the responsibility of raising a child who understands truth more fully than I did at his age. We stand at a place where ancestral history and future possibility meet. We do not need to erase community, food, gratitude, or gathering. Those are the parts of life my parents held onto even when everything else was taken from them. But we can refuse to uphold myths that cause harm.
The invitation now is to practice truth-telling in small, grounded ways: to learn the name of the Native land we live on, to read Indigenous authors with our children, to talk about what the holiday erases, to support Native-led organizations, to reframe Thanksgiving in our homes without celebrating a false story. These are quiet actions, but they shift something inside us. They teach our children that gratitude is not diminished by honesty, and belonging is strongest when it makes room for everyone’s truth.
This is the legacy I want to pass forward. One where we honor the complexities of where we come from while shaping a more honest, compassionate future. A future where our children inherit not myths, but courage. Not silence, but clarity. Not erasure, but connection rooted in truth.
