INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF PALESTINE
WHY INDIGENOUS CANADIANS SHOULD STAND WITH PALESTINIANS
Indigenous peoples around the world share a similar experience of memoricide, including in Canada. The residential school system, along with legislation such as the Indian Act of 1876, were designed to make the country’s indigenous people forget who they were by “killing the Indian in the child”. The consequences are evident today in the predominance of social ills facing indigenous people in Canada.
The Canadian Museum for Human Rights recently recognised that the country’s treatment of its indigenous population amounted to genocide. On the surface, this sounds like a progressive stance – but the reality is more complex.
CONNECTING PALESTINIAN AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ STRUGGLES FOR FREEDOM
Aboriginal people in Canada and Palestinians have a lot in common.
Take for example Canadian policy. The present government in Ottawa perpetuates the “us and them” narrative for both Palestinians and Aboriginal people.
In service to divide and conquer strategies, Ottawa supports illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine and unrestricted resource exploitation on Aboriginal homelands. Their logic is that Aboriginal people and Palestinians have inferior land rights, their cultures are backward and violent, and they are both disappearing peoples.
FROM PALESTINE TO CANADA, THE TRUTH OF INDIGENOUS NARRATIVES CANNOT BE SUPPRESSED FOREVER
Israel has attempted to export its destruction of Palestinian memories to the indigenous peoples of the world. Indigenous peoples the world over are all too familiar with these types of settler-colonial processes, especially in North America, where they have been subjected to ethnic cleansing, state-sponsored criminality and massacres – from the Canadian plains to Gustafsen Lake and Pine Ridge to Wounded Knee – to facilitate economic expansionism and expropriation.
In August 2018, several Palestinian human rights organizations attended The Red Nation’s annual conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
We, the undersigned Palestinian human rights and community organizations, state as follows:
- In August 2018, several Palestinian human rights organizations attended The Red Nation’s annual conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Red Nation, a community organization dedicated to Indigenous liberation, extended an invitation to Palestinian civil society to participate in the conference, exchange strategies for securing human rights and historical justice, and develop shared language around systems of oppression as well as future visions of decolonization and self-determination.
- October 8, 2018 marks Indigenous Peoples’ Day, officially celebrated in the United States as Columbus Day. This day marks the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492 to indigenous lands in what is now known as the ‘Americas’, and the arrival of foreign domination over its Native peoples. Though recognized as a historical event, the dehumanizing structures introduced by the European settler-colonization of Turtle Island have allowed for the elimination of the Native people, the confiscation of Native land and the extraction of natural resources. Such institutionalized hierarchy of human life continues to the present day.
THE PARALLELS BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND ISRAEL RUN DEEP. BOTH COUNTRIES WERE FOUNDED AS EUROPEAN SETTLER COLONIAL OUTPOSTS, CREATED THROUGH THE ETHNIC CLEANSING OF NATIVE PEOPLES IN ORDER TO GAIN CONTROL OF MAXIMUM LAND AND RESOURCES FOR A WHITE RULING CLASS. EUROPEAN SETTLERS ARRIVED IN BOTH TURTLE ISLAND (THE PRE-COLUMBIAN NAME FOR NORTH AMERICA) AND PALESTINE NOT TO LIVE IN HARMONY WITH THE NATIVE POPULATION, BUT TO REPLACE THEM. THROUGH SYSTEMATIC DISPOSSESSION, FORCED RELOCATION, AND MASSACRES, NATIVE POPULATIONS WERE KILLED AND EXILED, THEIR HOLY SITES DESECRATED, AND THEIR COMMUNITIES TERRORIZED BY MILITARY OCCUPATIONS.
WHY INDIGENOUS CANADIANS SHOULD STAND WITH PALESTINIANS
Indigenous peoples around the world share a similar experience of memoricide, including in Canada. The residential school system, along with legislation such as the Indian Act of 1876, were designed to make the country’s indigenous people forget who they were by “killing the Indian in the child”. The consequences are evident today in the predominance of social ills facing indigenous people in Canada.
The Canadian Museum for Human Rights recently recognised that the country’s treatment of its indigenous population amounted to genocide. On the surface, this sounds like a progressive stance – but the reality is more complex.
WHY ISRAEL AND NATIVES AREN’T NATURAL ALLIES
That eery familiarity, however powerful, is not the primary basis of my 28 years of public solidarity with Palestinians. The issue of Palestine, Israel, and indigeneity has many layers and is anything but resolved. But it doesn’t have to be resolved for me to make up my mind in favor of standing in solidarity with Palestinian people. Similarly, I did not demand that marriage equality be somehow provably traditional among Navajo, Cherokee, or Osage people when I have publicly opposed legislation by these tribal nations against gay marriage. Likewise, I did not require clear guidance that Cherokee tradition demands racial justice to stand in solidarity with disenfranchised Cherokee freedmen. So, neither do I need Palestinians to qualify themselves as Indigenous before I understand their struggle to be connected to mine.
The reaction to ICTMN op-ed pieces on the Middle East over the past couple of years have revealed a disheartening lack of knowledge and compassion among American Indian and First Nations people about these issues. That seems especially true when you slog through the comments threads. Along with the usual Zionist suspects who patrol the Internet seeking to discredit any criticism of Israel and its occupation, comments from uncritical fans of Israel and from Bellerose on his own article expose those commenting as all too eager to sling mud.
The Indigenous world needs forums like this one to be places we can turn to for serious discussion and debate about the costs and benefits of participating in these complex issues. We won’t get to that sort of discussion so long as essays like Bellerose’s fill space that could and should be given over to people with something more substantial and less personal to say.
Beauty and Palestinian Heritage
“In the past when a guy likes a girl he just had to look at her dress to know
from which village she is then he looks at that area to find her”.
Women’s traditional costume in Palestine is ‘the thoub’, a long dress
with cross-stitch and other designs usually representative of a particular region of the country.
Men wear ‘demaiah’, a similar long dress but without the stitching, and the
‘Kufiah or Hata’, a headdress made of cloth in black and white, or in white alone).
Traditional Palestinian dress is seen less and less nowadays, especially in the towns.
It is more common in the countryside and amongst the older generation.
Palestinian embroidery can be divided into four categories – ritual, technical, geographic, and structural.
It must be noted, however, that the entire tradition of embroidery in Palestine has revolved around preparations
for bridal trousseaus, given that wedding ceremonies are considered to be the most important occasion in the life
of the Palestinian family. Normally, wedding gear would begin to be assembled several years before the wedding day.
It used to be a collective effort that involved the bride, her relatives, and sometimes her neighbors. Designs and color distribution would be determined by older women who have more expertise and a better understanding of the significance of each motif.
AFRO-PALESTINIANS TALK HERITAGE AND RESISTANCE
Palestinians of African descent describe their daily struggles against ‘double-racism’ and Israeli occupation.
Indigenous Peoples Literature 