Indigenous Day of Mourning: Reflections on Land, Grief, and Justice
Grief is not always loud. Sometimes it whispers, barely audible under the hum of daily life. Other times, it roars, impossible to ignore. On this Indigenous Day of Mourning, I sit with the weight of those whispers and roars, personal and collective, historical and ongoing.
My own grief often feels tied to land, to questions of belonging, and to the disconnection that colonialism has carved into all of us. I am, at once, displaced by colonialism and also someone whose life on stolen land perpetuates it. When I walk in the forest I now call "home," I sometimes think about the ancestors who once cared for this place, whose languages once sang to these trees, whose hands nurtured the soil that now grows untamed and wild. The land knows. It always remembers. But do we?
If I were to ask a random person in this mountain, would they know this land belonged to the Lenape-Munsee people? Would they know that they still live here? Would they know about the Munsee Three Sisters Farm or the Munsee Cannabis Store, tended to by Lenape families reclaiming their stewardship of this land? If the land remembers, why don’t we?
Grieving Displacement and Connection
As someone Indigenous to Boriken (Puerto Rico), the displacement I carry feels like a wound with no clear salve. My ancestors were not settlers; they were colonized. They were violently severed from their lands and traditions, and I now find myself living in someone else’s homeland. It’s a grief that is layered, a mourning for what my people lost through two separate colonizations, and for the ways I now, unintentionally, occupy and benefit from what has been stolen from others.
To mourn is not to drown in guilt but to make space for accountability, responsibility, and relationship. Grieving the dispossession of others' lands does not erase my own ancestral grief; instead, it deepens my understanding of what it means to live in solidarity with the people of this land and to honor the sovereignty of their stories.
The Indigenous Day of Mourning began as an act of resistance in 1970, a refusal to celebrate the sanitized myth of Thanksgiving that ignores genocide, land theft, and the brutal history of colonization. Each year on this day, Indigenous communities gather to honor the ancestors and the stolen land, to grieve what was lost, and to fight for justice. It’s not a day of quiet reflection but one of truth-telling, solidarity, and survival.
Yet grief is never just backward-facing. Grief turns to the future. Grief asks: What can we create out of what remains?
The Death of Traditions
Colonialism stole land, brutally killed lives, severed relationships, destroyed languages, outlawed ceremonies, and tried to erase entire ways of being. Indigenous knowledge systems, so deeply tied to land and ecosystem, were replaced with extraction, commodification, and control.
But they couldn’t kill everyone. They couldn’t kill spirit. This knowledge lives on in the memories of the land, in the teachings of elders, and in the work of those fighting for sovereignty and reclamation. Today, the Land Back movement is one of the most powerful ways Indigenous communities are rebirthing those relationships, returning land to its rightful caretakers and restoring the balance that colonialism tried to destroy.
For those of us who are settlers, or guests on this land, the discomfort we feel is not something to run from. It’s something to sit with, to listen to, to let it transform us. Sitting with the grief of what has been lost, and our complicity in it, is necessary work.
For me, this grief is dual: mourning for my ancestors’ displacement and for the Lenape-Munsee people who remain dispossessed here. Accountability means holding these two truths together. It means asking, How can I live as a guest here in ways that honor the Lenape people? How can I carry my ancestral grief in a way that doesn’t perpetuate harm but creates solidarity?
Birthing New Traditions
Every death is also a beginning. The colonial world is crumbling, its systems failing, its violence laid bare, and its myths harder to believe. But in its place, something new is being born. Not without pain, not without labor, but with the promise of something better.
As we grieve the death of the old, we must also nurture what is emerging. New traditions, rooted in justice and connection, are already taking shape:
The Land Back movement teaches us how to support Indigenous sovereignty and reconnect with the land in ways that are reciprocal and just.
Decolonizing our own lives means learning the true histories of the places we live in, honoring Indigenous leadership, and dismantling colonial systems in our thinking and actions.
Building new rituals, from planting native gardens to creating spaces for collective mourning. It allows us to honor the past while imagining new futures.
For me, building new traditions includes honoring my own ancestral grief through reconnection with Arawak practices, even as I support the Lenape people in their fight for sovereignty here. It’s a dual responsibility that requires humility, care, and action.
Mourning as Love and Action
Grief is not passive. Mourning is an act of love, a refusal to let the past be forgotten, and a commitment to build something better in its place. On this Indigenous Day of Mourning, I think about the ways grief connects us, not just to those we’ve lost but to those still fighting, those still dreaming.
The land is still listening. The ancestors are still with us. The work of repair and rebirth is ours to carry.
So, we grieve. And then we build.
Michelle Carrera is a death doula, grief educator, and liberation coach dedicated to helping individuals and communities navigate the intersections of grief, death, and justice. Drawing from personal experience, ancestral wisdom, and systemic awareness, Michelle offers compassionate support to those processing loss, contemplating mortality, and seeking transformation through grief.
Book a free 30-minute Grief Compass session or explore her services at www.griefandliberation.com.