Natural Allies: Indigenous Communities Stand With Palestine

On November 14, an Indigenous Celebration Night was organised at Rogers Place in Edmonton바카라�the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta. The Bearhead Sisters바카라�a musical trio from Paul First Nation, Alberta바카라�performed at the event wearing shimmering blue dresses and chunky medallions.

As they sang a rendition of the Canadian national anthem, the TV cameras captured the three carrying a black-and-white scarf known as kaffiyeh바카라�a traditional Middle Eastern garment that has evolved to symbolise the Palestinian struggle for justice. After the performance, they wrote on their Facebook page: 바카라�We stand with our Indigenous people from all across the world. Tonight we바카라�d like to send our thoughts and prayers to (the) Palestinian Community.바카라�

Images and visuals of debris of schools and hospitals, unidentified dead bodies, piercing sounds of bombs, choking smoke, along with a resilient population fighting without electricity, water facilities, food and medical aid, have been emerging from Gaza for weeks now, prompting solidarities to pour in from across the globe. The images of children playing the 바카라�martyr game바카라� where they are seen carrying the bodies of their friends preparing themselves for the final moment of Shahdat brought in millions of indigenous people바카라�who themselves have been witness to such violence for centuries바카라�together in support of the Palestinian cause. Though the fight of Palestinians has been considered a struggle for the rights of indigenous people by a few Palestinian scholars like Jamal Nabulsi, till now, vocal support was absent.  

Indigenous People Extending Support

On October 26, the Red Nation, a coalition of indigenous activists dedicated to liberating native people from colonialism and capitalism, extended their support to the Palestinian cause. In no uncertain terms, they called for an immediate ceasefire and noted: 바카라�The settler states that dispossess and occupy our lands support Israel in dispossessing and occupying Palestine. We support Palestinian liberation and their right as an oppressed people to resist colonialism and genocide.바카라�

Signed by renowned indigenous activists like Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Nick Estes and Glen Coulthard, among others, the statement said: 바카라�We encourage Indigenous peoples worldwide to uplift additional demands from Palestinian organisers to commit to the Palestinian call to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) Israel and all institutions complicit in Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism.바카라�

Sogorea Te바카라� Land Trust, an organisation run by urban indigenous women, has also come out in support of the people of Palestine. It noted in a statement on November 14: 바카라�We condemn the Israeli siege, we condemn apartheid, we condemn genocide, and we demand an end to US military aid and funding of Israeli violence.바카라�

Their support comes at the cost of even risking funding. 바카라�We do so having already received hate messages and threats to withdraw funding.  We do not want money that is contingent on accepting genocide silently,바카라� it adds.

Tribal communities of the US have asked the leadership of the Navajo Nation to stand with the people of Palestine. Majerle Lister, a member of the Navajo Nation, said in a social media post: 바카라�The Navajo Nation should condemn the occupation of Palestine and call for a cease-fire and advocate for the self-determination of Palestinian people.바카라� Connecting the struggles of indigenous people across the world, they note: 바카라�The history of occupation and settler-colonialism ties Diné and Palestinian people together.바카라�

When Land Inheres the Body

As the indigenous communities across the globe are putting their weight behind the Palestinians, the question comes up바카라� can this movement be called an indigenous struggle? Historically, Palestine has had several indigenous tribes, including Jahalin Bedouin, al-Kaabneh, al-Azazmeh, al-Ramadin and al-Rshaida, among others who took refuge in the West Bank after 1948. But over the years, they have lost possession of land.

However, scholars like Nabulsi think such division between indigenous and non-indigenous Palestinians is a Western effort to project disunity. The people of Palestine, as he notes, inhere the land in their bodies and hence, the embodiment itself claims the indigenous status.

This sentiment that connects land to the body can be found across Palestinian literature. One of Palestinian rap artist Muqata바카라�s most popular songs goes: 바카라�Uhfur taht al-Aqsa hatlaqina바카라� (dig under al-Aqsa, you바카라�ll find us).

The embodied connection of the Palestinians with their land could be traced to the works of renowned Palestinian poet Mohammad Darwish as well. In the Journal of Ordinary Grief, he writes: 바카라�The true homeland is that which cannot be known or proved. Your awareness of the need for proof of the history of a rock and your ability to manufacture proof does not give you the priority of belonging vis-à-vis someone who can tell when the rains will come from the smell of that rock.바카라�

In the words of another Palestinian poet Elias Sanbar, 바카라�Palestine is not only a people but also a land. It is the link between these people and their despoiled land. It is the place where an absence and an immense desire to return are enacted바카라�.

These words are testimonies of the desire to retain the land where their ancestors are buried. On March 30, 1976, asserting their rights to land, thousands of Palestinians came out on the streets and organised marches across the cities against the occupier바카라�s plans to take away thousands of acres of land for the 바카라�purpose of the state바카라�.

However, the protests were brutally muzzled by the Israeli armed forces that killed six unarmed civilians and left hundreds wounded. The day is commemorated as 바카라�Land Day바카라� that Ala Alazzeh, a scholar on Palestine, says is 바카라�a central event that symbolises the unity of the Palestinian people and the concrete imagined space that they belong to.바카라�

Notably, the Palestinian movement known as Al-Ard that survived between the late 1950s and early 1970s literally meant 바카라�The land바카라�. Another significant Palestinian feminist movement by a collective called Murabitat al-Haram was also about love for land. Women, children and men used to gather in the Al-Aqsa Mosque campus in the morning and spend the whole day reading and reciting the Quran, besides doing other quotidian things.

Murabata literally means 바카라�stay바카라�바카라�a practice that stands against the efforts of Israel to eliminate and dispossess them of what is rightfully theirs. In 2015, Israel banned Murabitat al-Haram바카라�even though armed forces with guns slung on their shoulders continued their vigilance around the holy site. This movement also redirects one to think about the indigenous status of all the Palestinian people who are, though in different spatial and temporal contexts, fighting like their native brethren across the globe.

However, some Palestinian leaders denied being clubbed with the indigenous population. Yaseer Arafat, the renowned leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), said during an interview in 1987: 바카라�Israel has failed to wipe us out. We are here, in Palestine, facing them. We are not Red Indians.바카라�

Andrea (name changed on request) who runs a Palestinian solidarity network from Jerusalem, points out: 바카라�Among Palestinians, you have at least two specific, separate groups. On the one hand are indigenous Bedouin who are Palestinian or sometimes Israeli. In the West Bank, you also have indigenous Bedouin who are not refugees, but whose ancestors have lived on those lands for aeons바카라�

So, how people identify themselves is complex. Palestinians in cities, towns and villages don바카라�t claim specific indigeneity. They do not claim representation at the UN Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues where the Bedouin, Aborigines, the Maori, American-Indians, First Nations and others regularly meet, she adds.

Scholars think that such an understanding somehow misconstrues the indigenous movement as 바카라�defeated바카라�. As Nabulsi writes: 바카라�If we heed the accounts of indigeneity articulated by indigenous peoples themselves, rather than those provided by the settler, then we find in indigeneity not a politics of defeat but one of enduring presence and belonging in the land.바카라�

Ir(rationality) of Dispossession

Interestingly, the initial elimination of the Palestinians from their land following the Balfour Declaration of 1917, a document of British support to the Zionist project, followed two tropes to establish the moral high ground.  

The first one was the doctrine of terra nullius, which considers any land as unoccupied space, giving leverage to the settlers. In 1885, most of the African continent was put into this category on the basis that the tribes didn바카라�t have any 바카라�social or political organisation바카라�. Scholars think that the same 바카라�rationality바카라� had been used by Israel to occupy Palestine.  

The second doctrine was the civilisational trope. The very belief that erstwhile Palestine happened to be a wasteland led the first Prime Minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion to utter in 1915: 바카라�Jewish settlers would turn the wasteland and desolation into a flourishing oasis, as did the English settlers in North America바카라�.  

These efforts to mark them uncivilised were coupled with reducing their identities to 바카라�cultural aspects바카라� so that their rights over their land could be undermined. Belfour Declaration in its proviso notes, 바카라�Nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine바카라�, which Nabulsi thinks 바카라�both denies Palestinian political rights and the Palestinians바카라� sovereignty over Palestine.바카라�  

While pointing out that any freedom struggle has embedded roots in the assertion of indigenous identity, Palestinian-American journalist Ramzy Baroud says: 바카라�Since all national liberation movements were, per definition, the struggle for indigenous people to assert their collective rights for freedom, equality and justice, the Palestinian struggle was positioned as part of this global indigenous movement.바카라�  

The collapse of the USSR, followed by the Western powers바카라� unwavering support to Israel, provoked isolated Palestinian resistance movements and things began to change in recent years. 바카라�With the re-rise of indigenous movements around the world, from the Black struggle in the US, to indigenous people resurgence in North and South America, to the ultimate rise of an actual global movement centred around landless societies and indigenous rights바카라�which heavily invested in intersectionality, allowed it to multiply its powers several times over,바카라� adds Baroud, who is also the editor of Palestine Chronicle.  

Andrea is of the opinion that though many Palestinians do not claim membership in the indigenous movement, they consider themselves part of the broader movement for decolonisation. 바카라�Far-right Israeli policies within the West Bank are increasingly forcibly displacing indigenous Palestinian Bedouin and other Palestinian villagers; this 바카라�landgrab바카라� by militarised settlers is extremely disturbing. Not least because those Palestinians under attack often have nowhere else to go; the settlers have a vision of 바카라�judaising바카라� the entire land from the river to the sea, even Palestinians in the towns and cities begin to worry about their own guaranteed presence,바카라� she adds.  

During the four-day conditional ceasefire, images of mass graves across Gaza are dotting social media feeds reminding one of Muqata바카라�s repetitive evocation바카라�바카라�dig under al-Aqsa, you바카라�ll find us바카라�. 

(This appeared in the print as 'Natural Allies')