Gigi Hadid calls followers to honour and support Indigenous Peoples on American Thanksgiving

Model Gigi Hadid certainly has a lot to be thankful for on this American Thanksgiving: her romance with popstar Zayn Malik is going strong after five years, and they have a healthy and happy new baby girl (the selfies of them together are just adorbs). But she's also using this colonial holiday to honour the Indigenous People and First Nations living in the land known as America.Taking to her social media, she first posted her message to Twitter on Thursday morning encouraging followers to take this day to honour the First Nations, acknowledge this is stolen land, and recognize the genocide.

Happy Thanksgiving ? be grateful today and everyday. Also remember that American land was taken from the Indigenous Peoples. Honor them today through acknowledgment and education of that genocide.

— Gigi Hadid (@GiGiHadid) November 26, 2020

“Happy Thanksgiving,” she tweeted with a yellow heart emoji. “Be grateful today and everyday. Also remember that American land was taken from the Indigenous Peoples. Honor them today through acknowledgment and education of that genocide.”

Please share if you know of any Native American family companies we can support ?

— Gigi Hadid (@GiGiHadid) November 26, 2020

She followed up that statement with a call for resources, asking her 9.8 million followers, “Please share if you know of any Native American family companies we can support,” ending her note with a prayer hands emoji. (We know of a few Canadian ones too.)Naturally, her call for acknowledgement and education has been shared and retweeted widely across the platform, with thousands of tweets thanking her for bringing awareness to this often-underreported or glossed-over part of American history. Many other tweets shared links to websites or Twitter profiles that highlight Indigenous companies people can support and patron right now.Gigi didn’t stop at Twitter, though. In her Instagram Stories, the model also shared the same sentiment whilst adding two additions: a link to this article that lists 12 Native-owned food businesses to support, and also this Instagram post below by the Indigenous Peoples Movement that details political actions you can take today to support Native American rights.

 

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A post shared by Indigenous Peoples Movement (@indigenouspeoplesmovement)

While the supermodel may not be known for her political beliefs, she's been vocal about her Democratic support in the leadup to the U.S. presidential election. On November 7^th, she even sent her congratulations to President-elect Joe Biden and VP-elect Kamala Harris on Twitter, noting that she is proud to be an American with this news.

JOY. RELIEF. PRIDE!A NEW DAY. A NEW CHAPTER! More voices have been heard than ever before ??? A president that will work to serve all Americans, whether you voted for him or not, toward a UNITED America !! & THIS COUNTRY’S FIRST FEMALE VICE PRESIDENT ✨ pic.twitter.com/qqVPmhzp20

— Gigi Hadid (@GiGiHadid) November 7, 2020

Gigi joins the growing list of celebrities who have publicly denounced the genocide of Indigenous peoples on this land, including actress Shailene Woodley (who was arrested in 2016 for protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline alongside the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe). At the time, she gave an interview to TYT Politics where she said, “Thanksgiving was founded on a massacre.""From the time we’re little kids, we cut out cardboard paper pictures of pilgrims and feasts and turkeys, and yet none of our children know the truth about not only what happened to Native Americans when Westerners decided to colonize this country, but what is still happening to Native Americans."[video_embed id='2084941']RELATED: Meet Jamie Gentry, the designer making handcrafted moccasins with meaning [/video_embed]Musical icon Cher, who has always been outspoken on social media, has publicly tweeted about her own rejection of the Thanksgiving holiday and referred to the day as "the beginning of a GREAT crime."

.@slivingston7 I DON’T ! 4 me & my Family,it’s a day,When every1 is free 4Diner & a movie,Not 2 celebrate the beginning of a GREAT Crime?

— Cher (@cher) November 28, 2013

Sarah Silverman also narrated a video for Funny or Die where she talked about how she learned the meaning of Thanksgiving.“The turkey we kill is a symbol of the Native Americans we killed," Silverman narrates in the video. "We're so grateful for their farming techniques that they taught us, as we learned to harvest our own food on the land we took. We are giving thanks for being American. God bless America and its greedy self-righteous heritage."[video_embed id='2080167']BEFORE YOU GO: New audio series paints a picture of the world through the eyes of Indigenous people [/video_embed]