This American tradition remains bittersweet, even tragic, for Native Americans still struggling for equality
November 2025
BY KIM WHITING
“When you’re used to being first in line, having to wait can feel like oppression.”
When I heard noted Native American author and finance expert J.D. Colbert say this, I initially took it in the more obvious sense, namely that the White majority complains about challenges and discomforts that marginalized populations tend to experience as “just how life is.”
But another angle to his words occurred to me, fitting to the season of Thanksgiving: We who have always experienced relative privilege haven’t been aware that our circumstances are special, and we haven’t always acknowledged how grateful we should be for our lot in life.
For us, being “first in line,” metaphorically and literally, has been “just how life is.”
I thought it right to listen to the voice of a Native American during the Thanksgiving season—someone from a population with a very different take on Thanksgiving’s celebration of Europeans settling in America. He is, as he says, a “proud survivor of an Indian boarding school.” In other words, he’s experienced the downside of the Europeans’ arrival to this land—and then some.
Native American author and finance expert J.D. Colbert
I thought it important to be reminded of and feel appreciation for the pain that Native Americans went through and what they gave up for us to obtain our comforts, ease, and the land we call “home.” I also wanted us (the White majority, a group of which I am a member) to be more aware that as difficult as we sometimes see our lives as being, we’ve got it very good. There are elements inherent in our lives, woven into our days since birth, that are not the experiences of others, and for which we should give thanks.
I was introduced to Colbert when he gave a talk at a church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Colbert is a member of the Muscogee-Creek/Chickasaw tribes, living in a state with 39 federally recognized Indian nations. For 30 years, Colbert has assisted Native Americans in creating financial institutions. He’s Founding Executive Director of the North American Native Bankers Association (an association of Native-owned banks in the US and Canada) and he’s assisted over a dozen Indian tribes in acquiring or starting commercial banks.
In the 25 years since J.D. Colbert founded Chickasaw Community Bank, approximately 20,000 home loans have been granted to Native Americans. Says Colbert, “They were able to realize the American dream of home ownership.”
Having spent almost his entire career helping Native Americans obtain the financial institutions, financial accessibility and financial stability that many Whites take for granted has kept alive for him—perhaps more than some—an awareness of the contrast between the lives of Whites, as a general population, and minorities.
Repeated exposure to the contrast between the privileges of the White majority and struggles of minority populations could increase a person’s bitterness. But Colbert was notably positive during our chat
He was laughing often, finding humor in topics and focusing more on strengths and successes than struggles. He attributes this positivity to the deep importance his Native culture places on thankfulness.
Whiting: It’s so nice to be able to talk with you, especially on the topic of Thanksgiving for Native Americans—both the holiday and the practice of gratitude. I’m aware that some and perhaps most Native Americans look at Thanksgiving, understandably, as a day of mourning. What are your thoughts and feelings about Thanksgiving?
Colbert: Most Natives look at the arrival of the Pilgrims as marking the start of a tragic era in our very long existence as tribal peoples. It’s estimated that there were about ten million Natives in America when Europeans first arrived. By 1900, that number had gone down to less than 300,000. My own Muskogee bloodline encountered Hernando Desoto during his 1540 expedition through the Southeast U.S. He brought pigs with him and let them loose because he’d learned from his time in South America that Natives didn’t have immunity to viruses that pigs carried. That was his way to weaken and subjugate my ancestors, in his quest for gold and land for the King.
The myth about the super friendly “Let’s be neighbors” attitude of the Pilgrims toward the Natives is troubling to me.
And the Natives had an agenda as well.
At the time the Pilgrims landed, there had been a longstanding territorial conflict between the Wampanoag and Narragansett tribes. The Wampanoags, who hosted the Pilgrims, did so to build a diplomatic alliance. And in doing so, they shifted the balance of power in their favor. Their friendship with the Pilgrims was a geopolitical and diplomatic strategy.
One of my Thanksgiving traditions is to tell this story at the dinner table. We call it “Red Lens” storytelling, telling the story and the history, through Native lenses. I put a Red Lens on Thanksgiving.
My feeling about Thanksgiving is bittersweet. The bitter part is my recognition of the devastation for Native Americans that began after this famous gathering—and I’ve experienced some of the fallout myself. But the sweet part is the idea of sharing and counting blessings, appreciating family, friends and life. It’s about connecting. In my Native experience, we use this time of togetherness to remember and honor our ancestors. Both our current and ancestral family connections are celebrated. We do this to honor those who suffered more than we did, whose shoulders we stand on, and also simply to honor where we come from. Storytelling is a big part of a lot of Native Thanksgiving tables.
Whiting: What’s an example of a story that you’d tell at the Thanksgiving table?
Colbert: Tecumseh, a leader of the Shawnee Tribe, went to the Creek Confederacy in present day Alabama, to form a unified resistance against White expansion. The Creeks turned him down and, before he left, he said that once he got back to the North, he would stomp his feet on the ground three times and they would feel his stomps and know how powerful his movement was. Shortly after returning to what is now Indiana, Tecumseh stomped and the Earth did in fact shake for the Creek Nation. Some attribute the ground’s shaking to the great Madrid earthquake of 1811, but I think Tecumseh was responsible for that (he chuckles).
Whiting: That’s a great story. Your dinner table definitely sounds livelier than mine. A tradition at our table that I enjoy is that each person says a thing or two that they feel grateful for. But after your talk (at the Tulsa church), in which you said, “When you’re used to being first in line, having to wait can feel like oppression,” it occurred to me that there are blessings that my loved ones and I enjoy that are so baked into our everyday lives that we hadn’t thought to be grateful for them. What do you see the White majority taking for granted that for Native Americans is a challenge?
Colbert: Since I’ve spent my entire career in banking, it’s access to credit, banking and financial services that first comes to mind. Whites take for granted that they have not been barred from credit like Natives have, especially single mothers. This then affects their ability to have a home, start a business and build security and intergenerational wealth.
My family was headed by my mother. My biological father abandoned our family when I was six-weeks-old. We never saw him. He never supported us. My mother worked as nurse’s assistant in Claremore, Oklahoma. Financially it was tough at times, not as bad some had it, but challenging. My mother always handled her financial affairs, paid her bills on time and that sort of thing, but she was always denied home loans. We rented places and had to move about every six months.
When I first became president of a bank, in about 1991, I called my mom and told her to look for a house because I was going to make her a home loan. Two weeks later, she called to say she’d found a million-dollar mansion. She was joking, of course. She found a humble home and I made her the loan and at age 70 she finally realized the American dream of home ownership.
After that, I thought, “For women of color, does it take having a bank president as a son to have what others take for granted?”
I started banks for Native Americans in order to make banking accessible to Indian Nations. For example, I started the Chickasaw Community bank 25 years ago and my strategy was to offer the HUD 184 housing loan to Natives. The HUD 184 program had been around for 10 years, but few if any banks were utilizing it. I knew that we would build the success of this bank by deploying these loans across Indian Country. Twenty-five years later, the Chickasaw Community Bank has originated about 20,000 Native home loans, letting them, too, realize the dream of home ownership. I’m very proud of that. Odds are that only a small percentage of those people would’ve have gotten home loans from a non-Native-owned bank.
There have been and continue to be obstacles and hardships for Native Americans, but we keep stronger through a practice of counting our blessings, being thankful for what we do have. Native culture and spirituality is deeply rooted in gratitude, especially for the Earth and what the land offers. Our people have too often had too little, but we always manage to find things to celebrate and be thankful for.
We also tend to keep a sense of humor—although it’s a dark humor—in the face of trying times. For example, my mom used to say, “We didn’t have much when you were growing up, but we had something money couldn’t buy –poverty.” We laughed and then appreciated the laughter and that was one thing to feel grateful for.
Whiting: I am thankful for you, JD. Thank you for making me more aware of how much I have to be thankful for. Any parting words that you want to leave with our readers?
Colbert: Tecumseh said, “When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.” There is always something to feel thankful for.
Kim Whiting is a member of The Reporters Inc.’s advisory committee. She can be reached at whitingk444@gmail.com.
J.D. Colbert (Muscogee-Creek/Chickasaw) is the author of the historical fiction thriller, Between Two Fires – The Creek Murders and the Birth of the Oil Capital of the World. J.D. has been a columnist for several Indigenous publications including the Mvskoke News, Indian Country Today, Indianz.com, The Hownikan (Citizen Potawatomi Nation), The Chickasaw Times (Chickasaw Nation), and Native Oklahoma Magazine. Prior to devoting himself full time to writing and public speaking, Colbert had a long and successful career in the banking and finance industry where he specialized in providing banking services to Native American tribes and tribal members. He lives in Tulsa with his life partner, Raychelle Shabi (Navajo). Colbert is an undergraduate of the University of Oklahoma and also holds Masters degrees from Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University.
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