Video: Thanksgiving Thoughts from Rachel Baiman

This month’s ND Spotlight artist, Rachel Baiman, has a new EP out with songs exploring Thanksgiving — the holiday as well as the traditions behind it and how they fit into our modern world. 

The title track, “Thanksgiving” explores the rift between the narrative we’re taught in school about friendship between Native Americans and European settlers and the reality of how, then and now, Native American lands are constantly under threat. She started writing the song two years ago, she says, when the Dakota Access Pipeline fight was in full swing. “The irony of Thanksgiving being celebrated right as people were being arrested and sprayed with water guns for protecting their right to clean water really hit me, and that specific irony inspired this song,” she shares.  

No Depression is proud to share this video for “Thanksgiving,” filmed in Baiman’s riverside front yard in Madison, Tennessee, and featuring Cy Winstanley on guitar and Ashleigh Caudill on bass.

For more on Rachel Baiman, ND’s November Spotlight artist, read our feature story and this essay she wrote about getting thorugh today’s climate of division.

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at No Depression!