Giving Thanks Prayer by Native Americans

Robin Wall Kimmerer, in her book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants has a chapter, “Allegiance to Gratitude.”  She writes that the various Native American tribes have one thing in common: “we are rooted in cultures of gratitude.”  She tells of the Onondaga school which begins and ends each week with the  Thanksgiving Address, “a river of words as old as the people themselves, known more accurately in the Onondaga language as the Words That Come Before All Else.” 

She writes on p. 111:

    Imagine raising children in a culture in which gratitude is the first priority. Freida Jacques works at the Onondaga Nation School. She is a clan mother, the school-community liaison, and a generous teacher. She explains to me that the Thanksgiving Address embodies the Onondaga relationship with the world. Each part of creation is thanked in turn for fulfilling its Creator-given duty to the others. “It reminds you every day that you have enough. Everything you need to sustain life is already here. When we do this, every day, it leads us to an outlook of contentment and respect for all of Creation.”

     You can’t listen to the Thanksgiving Address without feeling wealthy. And, while expressing gratitude seems innocent enough, it is a revolutionary idea. In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition. Recognizing abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desires. Gratitude cultivates an ethic of fullness, but the economy needs emptiness. The Thanksgiving Address reminds you that you already have everything you need. Gratitude doesn’t send you out shopping to find satisfaction; it comes as a gift rather than a commodity, subverting the foundation of the whole economy. That’s good medicine for people and land alike.

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I was able to find a recording of a Native American thanks Prayer on YouTube which sounds like what Kimmerer describes in her book. In the video below, you will hear the Native American language followed by an English translation.

 

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