Five Fascinating Figures Every Family Should Remember This Thanksgivin – Sneakz Organic

Turkey, Traditions & Truth. Enjoy Your Holiday.

Ovens are humming. Somebody’s trying to calculate how many minutes it takes to both “crisp the skin” and “not dry out the turkey.” Kids are sneaking rolls off the baking sheet and at least one adult is pretending to “help” while mostly taste-testing the pie.

Thanksgiving is one of those rare days when the whole country slows down on purpose. We gather, we eat, we tell stories about “that one year the turkey almost caught fire.”

But there’s another story at the center of this holiday, one that most of us didn’t really get in school.

We heard about Pilgrims in buckle hats and friendly Native people sharing a peaceful feast. What we didn’t hear much about were the Native leaders making impossible choices, the epidemics that wiped out entire communities, or the way some Native families today mark Thanksgiving as a National Day of Mourning and a time to remember land loss, broken treaties, and survival.

So this year, instead of skipping that part or canceling the holiday altogether, what if we did something different? We can still honor our country and family's traditions and pay respects to other cultures as well. It's how we grow and broaden our perspectives.

Don't leave out your family stories. They're critical to teaching children all about their heritage. But what if we also told better stories that tell a fuller story at the table?

Here are five fascinating figures (plus a bonus one) your family can remember this Thanksgiving. These are people whose lives add depth, honesty, and hope to the day. These are kid-friendly, dinner-table-sized stories you can share between the mashed potatoes and the pumpkin pie.

1. Ousamequin (Massasoit): The Treaty Behind the Feast

If you’ve ever seen a children’s book about the “First Thanksgiving,” you’ve probably seen a calm Wampanoag leader standing in the background, quietly watching the Pilgrims eat.

That leader was Ousamequin, also known as Massasoit—and his real story is much more complicated and courageous than a picture-book cameo.

When the English arrived, his people were already devastated by disease brought by earlier Europeans. Neighboring nations were watching. Power balances were shifting. Ousamequin knew he had to protect his people in a dangerous new world.

So he made a strategic alliance with the Plymouth colonists. In 1621, he signed a peace treaty with them. It's the treaty that helped the English survive their early years and later inspired the feel-good harvest story we now call Thanksgiving.

At your table, you can tell kids:

“That first harvest feast didn’t happen because everyone was automatically friends. It happened because a Native leader was trying to keep his people alive.”

Family question to ask:
What tough choices do leaders have to make when there’s no perfect option? Do you think this treaty felt fair to everyone? Why or why not?

2. Tisquantum (Squanto): Survivor, Interpreter, Teacher

Most school versions of Thanksgiving give us a simple line: “Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to grow corn.” End of story.

But Tisquantum—his real name—lived a life so wild and painful it’s almost hard to believe:

He was taken from his homeland as a young man, kidnapped by traders, and sold overseas.
He lived in Europe, learned English, and eventually made his way back across the ocean.
When he finally returned home, his community, the Patuxet, had been almost completely wiped out by disease.

Imagine that: coming home and realizing your village is gone.

Because he spoke English and understood both worlds, Tisquantum became an interpreter and guide between the Wampanoag, the remaining Native communities, and the English colonists. He did teach them how to plant local crops and survive the winters. But he was not a sidekick. He was a survivor navigating two worlds, carrying trauma, strategy, and hard choices.

Family question to ask:
How do you think it felt for Tisquantum to help the colonists after everything he’d been through? What might have motivated him?

3. Sarah Josepha Hale: The Woman Who Wouldn’t Let Thanksgiving Go

Fast-forward about 240 years.

The country is in the middle of the Civil War. Families are split. The idea of “one nation, together at the table” feels very far away.

Enter Sarah Josepha Hale, a writer and magazine editor (and yes, the author of “Mary Had a Little Lamb”). She believed a national day of gratitude could help the country pull together. So she did what determined writers do:

She would not stop writing about it.

For decades, Hale used her magazine to publish Thanksgiving recipes, stories, and editorials. She wrote letters to governors and presidents asking for a nationwide Thanksgiving. In 1863, she wrote to President Abraham Lincoln, urging him to create “a national and fixed Union Festival.”

Lincoln finally said yes.

He issued a proclamation inviting Americans to set aside the last Thursday in November as a day of thanks. That’s the root of the national holiday we still celebrate today.

Family question to ask:
If you could write to the president about one change you’d like to see in the country, what would it be? Do you think one person’s idea can really shape a tradition? And what are you thankful for today?

4. Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte: Healing as a Form of Gratitude

Thanksgiving isn’t only about looking backward. It’s also about asking: What kind of future are we building?

One powerful answer comes from Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte, a member of the Omaha Nation and the first Native American woman to become a physician in the United States.

Growing up, she saw Native people denied medical care—or treated poorly—by white doctors. She once watched a Native patient die after a doctor simply refused to come. That injustice lit a fire in her.

She went to medical school, graduated at the top of her class, and returned home to care for her community. She treated thousands of patients, traveled long distances by horse and buggy, and spoke out about sanitation, tuberculosis, and alcohol abuse. She also helped establish a hospital on the Omaha reservation.

If Thanksgiving is about gratitude, Dr. Picotte’s life shows one way to express it: by helping keep your community healthy.

Family question to ask:
What’s one small health habit we can adopt this year—sleep, veggies, movement—that would honor people like Dr. Picotte who fought to keep their communities well? What's on small thing we can do to help our community?

5. Chef Sean Sherman: Decolonizing the Thanksgiving Plate

Now let’s step into the kitchen.

Sean Sherman, an Oglala Lakota chef often called “The Sioux Chef,” has made it his mission to revive Indigenous foodways. He focuses on the ingredients and cooking methods that Native communities used long before supermarkets and stuffing mixes.

His restaurants and books focus on pre-colonial foods: wild rice, corn, beans, squash, game meats, berries, wild herbs. He avoids wheat, dairy, and cane sugar and instead highlights what the land originally offered.

For Thanksgiving, Sherman encourages people to “decolonize” the menu—not by banning turkey, but by adding dishes that honor Indigenous ingredients and respect the land.

It might look like:

A Three Sisters side dish (roasted squash, corn, and beans).
Wild rice with cranberries and toasted pumpkin seeds.
A simple berry sauce with minimal added sugar.

Family question to ask:
What’s one Native or local or farmer's market igredient we can feature on our table this year? How would our plates look different if we cooked more from the land where we live?

Bonus Figure: Abraham Lincoln – The President at the Head of the Table

If there’s a “traditional” Thanksgiving figure beyond Pilgrims and turkey, it’s probably Abraham Lincoln.

After reading Sarah Josepha Hale’s letter in 1863—and with the Civil War tearing the country apart—Lincoln called for a national day of thanks. He asked Americans to pause, remember their blessings, and pray for “the widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers” of the war.

Lincoln’s proclamation didn’t magically unite the country. But it did give us a yearly moment to stop, look around, and say, “We’re still here. We still have each other.”

When you see those iconic images of a big Thanksgiving table, Lincoln is the reason there’s a date on the calendar tying them together.

Family question to ask:
What do we want our Thanksgiving to stand for? If someone read a “proclamation” about our home, what would it say?

Healthy Harvest, Honest Stories

We care about what goes on the plate and what goes with it.

On the plate, that might look like:

Adding an Indigenous-inspired veggie dish (hello, roasted squash and beans).
Balancing out the sugar blast with fiber-rich sides and a calmer, lower-sugar dessert option—like a pumpkin custard cup or yogurt parfait next to the classic pie.
Letting kids help in the kitchen so they feel like part of the story, not just the cleanup crew.

With the plate, it means:

Telling truer stories about Native leaders like Ousamequin and Tisquantum.
Remembering healers like Dr. Picotte and creators like Sean Sherman.
Acknowledging that for some Native families, this day is about mourning and survival, not just cozy gratitude and holding space for both.

Thanksgiving doesn’t have to be perfect. The turkey might be a little dry. The pie might sag in the middle. Somebody will definitely forget the rolls in the oven. You'll burn the marshmallows on the sweet potato casserole.

But if you can gather your people, share a meal that’s a little kinder to your bodies, and make room at the table for more than one version of the story?

That’s a Thanksgiving worth remembering and a family tradition everyone can get behind.

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