Re: “Letter to the editor: Thanksgiving hard to swallow for Indians” (Dec. 6):

Dan Ennis, Wulustukyieg Indian elder, made excellent points in his letter. I hope he sees my response and knows that my husband and I support him, although only one of us is Native American.

My husband, full-blooded Passamaquoddy, has no use for Thanksgiving either, and I agree about the facetiousness of continued celebration based on my people’s subsequent unbelievable cruelty to his people. That historical malice in any form anywhere should not continue with resultant strife and separation.

My husband and I live in harmony. I’m a born-again Christian and have learned during our marriage (24 years so far) that two distinctively different mindsets can peacefully co-exist. I recognize and rejoice in Thanksgiving every day of my life. Jesus Christ is my Lord, Savior and Anchor in this remarkable world of varied races and tenets.

It grieves me that Mr. Ennis includes spirituality in his list of Caucasian-caused losses. Excuse me, but that’s his to keep. It’s the sum and substance of being. No one has authority to take it. I pray he can believe that.

We’ve heard “Keep the faith.” Without it, we dread consequences. It’s my conviction that the key to faith-keeping is the determination of the possessor divinely empowered toward that end. “God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7).

Mr. Ennis is wise to have clung to the truth he described as “the words of a very wise elder: ‘We must love one another or die.’ ” I might add that Jesus Christ, the voluntary Giver of eternal life and love, said the same: “This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you” (John 14:12).

Martha Yerxa

South Portland

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