On a warm, sun­ny Octo­ber day, native and non native peo­ple of all ages came togeth­er for tra­di­tion­al danc­ing with music pro­vid­ed by the Yootay Host Drum, from the Mashen­tu­quet Pequot Trib­al Nation. Some par­tic­i­pants wore tra­di­tion­al regalia while singing out­side of the St. James Chap­ple in Charlestown, Rhode Island.

The Tomaquag Muse­um orga­nized a Cran­ber­ry Thanks­giv­ing cel­e­bra­tion with tribes from all over the north­east­ern region in atten­dance on Oct. 4, 2025. The cel­e­bra­tion hap­pens in accor­dance with the Har­vest Moon with­in the 13 moons or thanks­giv­ings. The thanks­giv­ing event is part of a year’s worth of giv­ing thanks cel­e­brat­ed by tribes like the Nar­ra­gansett, Mash­pee Wampanoag, Mashan­tuck­et Pequot, etc.

The thanks­giv­ing is meant to cel­e­brate that “all the things that have been grown are get­ting ready to be har­vest­ed and dried and stored for the win­ter to come,” accord­ing to Chrys­tal Mars Bak­er, the edu­ca­tion man­ag­er at the Tomaquag Muse­um and a Narragansett/Niantic Trib­al cit­i­zen.

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Bak­er, right, teach­es a young girl about the his­to­ry of Cran­ber­ry Thanks­giv­ing while she works on bas­ket stamp­ing, a tra­di­tion­al art form done in a con­tem­po­rary way on Oct. 4, 2025.

Bak­er said the com­mu­ni­ty event is meant to be “an edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ty,” as well as a time for “shar­ing, edu­cat­ing and expos­ing our­selves and our trib­al cit­i­zens.” By mak­ing the event pub­lic, the the Tomaquag Muse­um endeav­ors to con­nect the gen­er­al pub­lic to the native com­mu­ni­ty to pro­vide vis­i­bil­i­ty and under­stand­ing of the con­tin­ued pres­ence and why tra­di­tions are impor­tant.

One intent of the cel­e­bra­tion was to gath­er togeth­er and be thank­ful for the year’s har­vest, Bak­er explained.

“There would be a cer­e­mo­ny, there would be danc­ing, there would be gath­er­ings of peo­ple from vil­lage to vil­lage, com­ing togeth­er just like what you see today,” she said.

More infor­ma­tion on the his­to­ry of Cran­ber­ry Thanks­giv­ing can be found in the Tomaquag Muse­um newslet­ter.

The idea of Thanks­giv­ing for Indige­nous peo­ple is very dif­fer­ent from what most peo­ple think of as the hol­i­day of thanks­giv­ing, explained UConn Pro­fes­sor Sandy Grande.

Dance is an impor­tant part of Indige­nous cel­e­bra­tion as move­ment, music and regalia allows “dancers to express both com­mu­ni­ty iden­ti­ty and their own indi­vid­ual jour­neys,” accord­ing to the Run­ning Strong for Amer­i­can Indi­an Youth orga­ni­za­tion.

Bak­er stressed that although Native peo­ple are liv­ing in mod­ern times, cel­e­brat­ing tra­di­tions allows Native com­mu­ni­ties to con­tin­ue their cul­ture.

“We may have evolved. We may have changed. We are wear­ing con­tem­po­rary clothes, we have 9‑to‑5 jobs, we live in homes, but we are edu­cat­ing about the loss or the dis­place­ment,” Bak­er said. “We are break­ing the myth that there was only one Thanks­giv­ing. It’s break­ing the myth that it hap­pened in Novem­ber. It’s break­ing the myth that it was the Pil­grims who met the Indi­ans and became great friends and shared a meal and all of that, because none of that is true.”

Indige­nous artist Josephine Smith sews a piece of Indige­nous regalia at the Cran­ber­ry Thanks­giv­ing on Oct. 4, 2025 in Charlestown, Rhode Island.

Smith, who is part of the the Shin­necock Indi­an Nation in Long Island, NY, is a cul­tur­al edu­ca­tor, artist and native cook. She was the for­mer edu­ca­tion coor­di­na­tor and event plan­ner for the Shin­necock Nation Muse­um and Cul­tur­al Cen­ter as well as the for­mer direc­tor of the Shin­necock Nation Cul­tur­al Resources Depart­ment. She is an artists and makes regalia and jew­el­ry by doing her own bead­work. She uses many nat­ur­al mate­ri­als, includ­ing wampum and bird feath­ers in her work. Her busi­ness, which she runs with her cousin, is called Hands of Tra­di­tion.

Crafts are essen­tial to “keep­ing tra­di­tions going” and are a “con­tin­u­a­tion of who we are,” Smith said.

The Cran­ber­ry Thanks­giv­ing event also fea­tured Indige­nous food ven­dors sell­ing cran­ber­ry-based meals. Accord­ing to Bak­er, Cran­ber­ry Thanks­giv­ing is meant to acknowl­edge the gifts that “sus­tain the peo­ple, and cran­ber­ry is one of those gifts.”

Much of the food sold was a com­bi­na­tion of con­tem­po­rary ingre­di­ents with a tra­di­tion­al cran­ber­ry influ­ence which “gives thanks to the cran­ber­ry,” Bak­er said.

Although the Octo­ber 2025 Cran­ber­ry Thanks­giv­ing event was orga­nized by the Tomaquag Muse­um, cit­i­zens of dif­fer­ent trib­al nations across the region attend­ed includ­ing those from the Nar­ra­ganset, Mashan­tuck­et Pequot and the Mohe­gan Trib­al Nations.

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