Plymouth, Massachusetts - Each year as many Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, Native people gather on Cole's Hill in Plymouth to commemorate a National Day of Mourning for the genocide of Indigenous Peoples.

"Once again on so-called Thanksgiving Day, United American Indians of New England and our supporters are gathered on this hill to observe a National Day of Mourning for the Indigenous people murdered by settler-colonialism and imperialism worldwide," UAINE co-leader Kisha James (Aquinnah Wampanoag and Oglala Lakota) said to kick off Thursday's march and rally in the traditional homelands of the Wampanoag people.

"Today marks the 56th time we have gathered here to mourn our ancestors, tear down settler mythologies, and speak truth to power," she added.

The NDOM tradition, started by James' grandfather Wamsutta Frank James, began in 1970. Indigenous activists denounced the atrocities committed by the Pilgrims, boarded a copy of the Mayflower ship, and buried Plymouth Rock in sand.

James said NDOM exists to challenge false narratives around Thanksgiving that cast the day as a celebration of friendship between white settlers and Indigenous people. In reality, the Pilgrims began plundering Native burial sites and winter provisions soon after their arrival.

Today's Thanksgiving holiday is intrinsically linked with this history of colonial violence. James noted that Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop called for a day of thanksgiving in the year 1637, after colonists massacred a Pequot village on the banks of the Mystic River.

"The settler project created by the Pilgrims did not end with the Pilgrims," James said. "The evils that the Pilgrims brought to these shores – racism, slavery, the class system, jails, homophobia, transphobia, patriarchy – these evils continue to affect the peoples of Turtle Island and beyond."

"When people perpetuate the Thanksgiving mythology, they are not only erasing the Pilgrims' legacy of settler-colonialism and genocide but also celebrating it."

UAINE co-leader Mahtowin Munro (Oglala Lakota) outlined the pressing concerns in Indian Country today which are a direct continuation of the violence and dispossession targeting Indigenous Peoples. These include federal cuts to food, housing, education, and healthcare programs as well as ICE raids, mass incarceration, increased attacks on trans and Two-Spirit people, and more.

"You may have heard that this country has a vice president who stands up in front of thousands of people and says that when Columbus first got here and the other Europeans first got here, they were shocked because the sacrifice of children was so widespread and that's why they had to bring Christianity to us," Munro said, referring to remarks JD Vance made during a Turning Point USA event last month.

"We're talking about people who are killing children every day – in Palestine, around the world – and they dare to say that about us."

There were numerous expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian people during this year's NDOM.

Lea Kayali of the Palestinian Youth Movement once again joined the event, saying the annual occasion inspires her to "reflect, especially in these last two years, on grief, loss, and survival."

"Colonialism robs us of mourning itself in this sense because it rips us as Indigenous people from our roots and supplants an ongoing structure of violence – a genocide factory that breaks our bones, steals our lands, and criminalizes our existence," Kayali said.

"When we mourn publicly during colonial onslaught as we do today, we force the world to bear witness to the glorious lives that our people lived," she insisted.

"We as Indigenous Peoples have something that our enemies will never have, and that's a cause worth dying for."

After almost 50 years behind bars, Leonard Peltier (Anishinabe and Dakota/Lakota) shared a video message from his home on the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Reservation.

"I'm happy to hear that you're still exposing Thanksgiving," Peltier said. "It's probably one of the biggest false propaganda information that the American people and American government have ever distributed among people around the world."

The 81-year-old could not be at NDOM in person as he remains in home confinement per the executive commutation issued by former US President Joe Biden on his final day in office.

Peltier had been given a double life sentence on charges of killing FBI special agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams on the Pine Ridge Reservation during a 1975 shootout. The FBI coerced witnesses and excluded and falsified critical evidence in Peltier's 1977 murder trial, resulting in a conviction widely recognized to be illegitimate.

The longtime political prisoner said the US has tried to cover up what it has done to Indigenous Peoples, but that colonial violence is repeating itself today.

"Look what they're doing in Palestine. Look what they're doing in Ukraine. Look now what they're trying in Iran," Peltier warned.

"This is the same thing they did to us," he continued. "This is why we've got a Day of Mourning. So we've got to fight to expose these atrocities. It's not over."