Thanksgiving Remembered As Day Of Mourning In Plymouth

As many of us sit down on Thanksgiving to celebrate and feast with our families, another group in Plymouth, Massachusetts, will be looking to break their fast.

Every Thanksgiving day since 1970 a group of Native Americans have gathered there to mark what they call a National Day of Mourning.

"Once you focus on the history and if you know it, there's a lot of grief and mourning for our losses of our people, our land, our clean water, oceans," says Ramona Peters, tribal historic preservation officer for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe.  "There's a lot of things that we've lost and continue to lose."

The history of Thanksgiving and how it's celebrated is the subject of a new book, "Thanksgiving: The Holiday at The Heart of The American Experience."

Melanie Kirkpatrick, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and author of "Thanksgiving: The Holiday at The Heart of The American Experience." She tweets @melaniekirkpat.

Ramona Peters, tribal historic preservation officer for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe.