Local Journalism
What is Thanksgiving to Indigenous people? 'A day of mourning'
How do Indigenous people spend Thanksgiving?
For many, rather than a celebration of peace and shared prosperity between Native Americans and Pilgrims, Thanksgiving represents the dark shadow of genocide and the resilience of Native people.
Every tribe and every individual may have a different way of spending Thanksgiving. Some will gather with their families and share a meal, exchanging prayers and stories from the rich oral history of Native Americans. Others will fast for the entire day.
For tribal citizen Dennis W. Zotigh, Thanksgiving is "a day of mourning." Zotigh is a member of the Kiowa Gourd Clan and Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo Winter Clan, and a descendant of Sitting Bear and No Retreat, both principal war chiefs of the Kiowas.
"To most Natives, Thanksgiving is not a celebration," Zotigh says. "Natives, particularly in the New England area, remember this attempted genocide as a factual part of their history and are reminded each year during the modern Thanksgiving."
A North Carolina student wore a Mexican flag over his graduation gown. He left without a diploma.
“I just gotta represent,” Lopez said. “I did it for my family. They came over here to give me a better future.”
Future of Factories: How a business made a $250,000 from old T-shirts
Eric Henry, a Burlington entrepreneur, was facing a dilemma.
As the founder of a T-shirt company named TS Designs, he was seeing reduced demand for his shirts due to the pandemic, and he had years' worth of inventory clogging up his space. He spoke with his close manufacturing partner Lori Trotter of Trotters Sewing Company, and she came up with an idea that ended up making them about $250,000 in revenue.
Trotters Sewing Company in Asheboro is a master of market diversification. The umbrella of products they sew covers the furniture, bedding, pet, military, and medical industry. Henry first approached them to brainstorm ideas for what to do with his overflowing inventory of T-shirts. His original idea was to turn them into grab bags, but Trotter had noticed the demand for PPE and asked: What if we made them into masks instead?