The Native American model of Palestine’s future

Steven Salaita 10 March 2016

Members of the Idle No More movement for Indigenous sovereignty and to protect the land and water, at the Peoples’s Climate March in New York City, 22 September 2014. (Allan Lissner/Idle No More)

Note: the hyperlinks throughout this article lead to book recommendations in American Indian and Indigenous Studies.

Comparison of Native Americans and Palestinians has become increasingly common. Thus arises a corresponding need to assess the problems and prospects of comparative analysis.

Because I teach American Indian and Indigenous Studies in the Arab World, I’ve been thinking frequently about how we might productively engage Natives from spaces of Palestine solidarity.

There’s no way to adequately represent the heterogeneity of Native and Palestinian viewpoints, commitments and ambitions. It is unwise to present Indian Country and Palestine as stable sites of inquiry, especially if we approach them in tandem.

To compare Natives and Palestinians – or any constellation of discrete national communities – is to constantly balance the problems of vagueness with the value of structural critique.

The point of comparison isn’t to theorize uniformity, but to discover political and intellectual paradigms that traverse national, cultural and geopolitical boundaries.

Comparative work is exceptionally difficult; my sloppiness often inspires rejoinder and correction. Tension is a necessary element of meaningful dialogue.

We have to select which points of tension are worth navigating. Here I’m concerned with the perception that Natives are defeated and disinherited. This perception exists in the Arab World, but originates in Canada and the United States.

People often assume that Natives have been permanently dispossessed or exist as ahistorical monuments of conquest unable to access modernity, if they exist at all.

Based on this assumption, those concerned with the colonization of Palestine can be tempted to evoke Natives as the victims of a tragic fate that Palestinians must avoid.

This formulation, however well-intentioned, does a tremendous disservice to Natives. A less sanguine reading might observe that it reinforces an ongoing colonial erasure of Indigenous peoples in (and beyond) North America.

It is based on an inaccurate understanding of both the past and present. Of course we don’t want Palestinians to be forever deprived of their homeland or exist as romantic emblems of an irretrievable past. Nor do we want Israel to eternally occupy Palestine’s history.

But Indian Country isn’t an example of such closures having occurred. The United States and Canada haven’t yet managed to settle the matter of their permanent supremacy.

The necessity of decolonization

Natives representing hundreds of discrete nations currently fight for restitution, sovereignty, treaty rights, self-determination and liberation.

Indeed, it is in Indigenous communities around the world, many of them supposedly defeated or disappeared, where we find principled and innovative forms of decolonization.

Coast Salish territory, known to many as British Columbia, remains unceded. The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) issues its own passports.

The Diné (Navajo) control a region much larger than historic Palestine. The Kanaka Maoli (Hawaiians) do not recognize US authority on their islands.

Ceremonial and spiritual practices have survived centuries of subjection. Native languages are increasingly taught and spoken. Scholars, artists and storytellers recover and accelerate sophisticated intellectual traditions.

Things aren’t all peachy. The US and Canadian governments remain in violation of numerous treaties and retain ultimate jurisdiction over tribal governance.

Poverty on certain reservations is acute. Corporations, often with the complicity of a neocolonial elite, dump pollution in Native communities. They also destroy sacred sites and extract precious resources. Police violence is extraordinary in Indian Country. Indigenous girls and women disappear at an alarming rate. Sports teams use racist language and imagery.

These problems illuminate the continued existence of colonization and the corresponding necessity of decolonization.

Palestine solidarity activists needn’t hold up Natives as either fabled warriors or cautionary failures. We can encounter them in the context of very real and relevant struggles for freedom.

Still undefeated

The image of the defeated Native arises from venerable discourses of conquest. Settler colonization relies on linear histories and biological hierarchies.

The US and Canada have supposedly surpassed the mythical point where ceding land or authority would still make sense. The Natives lost. Those who survived are multicultural tokens or anthropological curiosities.

Much of this reasoning invokes the persistent idea that Natives exist outside of modernity. As objects of the past, representing a tragic but necessary era of American progress, Natives cannot raise legitimate claims in the present.

The model of Native Americans as Palestine’s nightmare scenario, then, reproduces the logic of settler colonization. The reproduction of that logic is often unwitting, but it is through circulation of unexamined orthodoxy that cultural exceptionalism most vigorously survives. Any notion that Natives lost is a triumph of US and Canadian colonial discourses.

I don’t want to suggest that the logic I critique is a standard or even normal perception among Palestine activist communities around the world. However, I have encountered some variation of “we don’t want to become like the Indians” enough times to say the formulation does exist.

Read, write, shout

Working on Palestine solidarity from the Arab World doesn’t necessitate the inclusion of Natives, though any analysis of Israeli settler colonization that ignores corresponding colonial projects will be limited.

Working on Palestine solidarity from North America, however, does necessitate emphasis on Natives. Casting aside the notion that Natives no longer exist or are relics of a tragic past means making ourselves available to assist their political aspirations.

For instance, to perform boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) activism in North America means being attuned to the horrors of settler colonization. Being attuned to those horrors should entail an understanding of its existence in the geographies we inhabit.

This isn’t to say that we must find ways to make Natives and Palestinians analogous. We merely need to recognize that our obligations extend beyond Palestine.

Those of us in North America inhabit contested spaces. Deciding to align with the native or the settler should be an easy choice.

What to do once that choice has been made?

Read as much as you can about Indigenous peoples in North America (and, preferably, on other continents).

Seek sites of protest, celebration and learning. Proffer the forms of support that you most appreciate in relation to Palestine solidarity activism.

In short, participate in the projects that enliven rather than ossify Indigenous peoples around the world.

The Native American model redefined

Despite my vigorous rejection of the disappearing Native paradigm, we can nonetheless find appropriate models for Palestinian nationalism among Native communities.

Instead of declaring that we don’t want Palestinians to become like Natives, it would be more accurate to think of Natives as a model for Palestinian resistance and survival. The point isn’t simply recognition, but to emphasize the need for decolonization in North America.

Natives are still around despite persistent attempts at physical extermination and centuries of forced assimilation. They vigorously contest land theft and violations of autonomy. They are at the forefront of movements to transform the US and Canada from plutocratic armories into spaces of equality and justice.

If Palestinians can similarly survive the brutal assault on their peoplehood, as they have done thus far, then it will be an achievement worthy of celebration. That Natives aren’t fully liberated doesn’t negate the value of thoughtful comparison; it amplifies the need to compare.

It likewise amplifies the need to make decolonization of North America a central feature of BDS activism in the US and Canada.

As long as we practice anti-Zionist ethics on colonized ground, we necessarily involve ourselves in the politics of Native independence, whether or not we’re aware of that involvement.

Those in the Arab World can explore the implications of discussing the United States and Canada as settler colonies rather than merely as imperial powers.

This sort of shift might generate greater recognition of Natives as contemporaneous agents and produce even deeper understanding of the conditions in North America that inform the colonization of Palestine.

Wherever we live, it is imperative to avoid replicating narratives of colonial triumph. Nobody interested in Palestine’s liberation should imagine an obliquely terrible future. The past is vexing enough. And the present is still unsettled.

We needn’t set Natives and Palestinians against one another in fixed iterations of linear history. It’s better to participate in the timeless models of resistance that disturb settlers on both sides of the Atlantic.

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Comments

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D. replied on

My compliments to Mr. Salaita (and by the way...you are a silver-lining to the abhorrence of rejection).
If I may, can I say as an American to the respect toward Natives. The title "Indian" was made by settler's. So in this present walk of their mindful persecution I have not only sent out email's of apologies to certain tribes, but I try to reject the brainwashed media terms that was so prevalent in my childhood...ie "Indians". Many American's have embraced their cause(s) and like Palestinians, have come to join them whether it be Powwow's, protests, and/or justice. We as Americans need so very much to make heartful solemn and sincere apologies to all peoples that this so-called Democracy has oppressed by voting for a government which has been against decency, respect and humanity for far too long. God Almighty requires it before healing can indeed come to anyone of us. The Internet has provided truth from propaganda and makes us all accountable in doing the right thing. When 'money'... in the form of taxes, tithes, charities and personal spending is not mindfully extended to the probable oppression of others...there will be no end to the suffering, so BDS really engulfs the world - it's land, sea, air, flora, fauna and finally man. When man has no more greed, hatred, supremacy, and love of war, is when peace can come to all life. Thank you for your words and may we all see peace soon.

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margaret ferguson replied on

This is a powerful and important video--like many others who object to the U.S. funding of the state of Israel, I had not seen this 1991 production, and am shocked by how impossible it would be for the CBS of today to air such a show. Who is the interviewer, do you know? Thank you for the link.

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Peter Loeb replied on

I find Mr. Salaita's points eloquent and scholarly in that
horrible sanitizd way of academia. I am certain I could
never persuade Mr. S.

The specifics may different. It remains that there a stunning
amount of description .

It remains that "Indian Removal" did happen. It was real.
Thousands of Indians were murdered,raped, dispossessed,
humiliated. The "trail of tears" is not just a fabrication.

This cannot be erased from history.

Andrew Jackson was the 7th President and did establish
"the Indian Removal tit" as he called it---the administration
to remove native Americans. Jackson did thumb his nose at
the US Supreme Court and because Native Americans
would not move, claimed he could not deprive
anti-Indian legislation but could compel other states to
comply ("nullification").

I have written before of these sources in these spaces. I am
sure Mr. Salaita is an excellent Professor and as such is
familiar with them.

With all due respect, his remarks read like a complex and
long-winded book one has to read to complete a college course.

As far as Palestine is concerned, I am more and more convinced
by the similarities between the dispossession, removal,
murder, extermination of Palestinians by colonizers. Yes,
of course there are differences. It is the obvious similarities
which are frightening. Deir Yassin and Wounded Knee (South Dakota,
December 1890).

Being in the forefront of of "movements to transform" or "surviving
an assault on their peoplehood" is insufficient. Thousands of Palestinians
are dying. Every day. Thousands of American Natives were eliminated.

----Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA

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Peter Loeb replied on

"The model of Native Americans as Palestine’s nightmare scenario, then, reproduces the logic of settler colonization. The reproduction of that logic is often unwitting, but it is through circulation of unexamined orthodoxy that cultural exceptionalism most vigorously survives. Any notion that Natives lost is a triumph of US and Canadian colonial discourses." ---Steven Salaita, above

Wounder Knee, South Dakota, USA as described(in part) by Black Elk
(December 1890):

"...we followed down along the dry gulch, and what we saw was terrible.
Dead and wounded women and children and little babies were scattered
all along there where they had been trying to run away. The soldiers
had followed along the gulch , as they ran, and murdered them in there.
Sometimes they were in heaps, because they had all huddled together...Sometimes bunches had been killed and torn apart...I saw a little
baby trying to suck its mother, but she was bloody and dead..."
cited in Virgil J. Vogel, THIS COUNTRY WAS OURS....

Despite the unique character of each and every historical event there is
much to be learned.

There is much to be learned despite differences.

The fact is the the Native Americans in North America lost. The
Palestinians lost from the beginning and continue to lose every day.
The Israeli plans to build a wall around Jeruselum are a reminder. So
too are the continuing death, dispossession, home demolition etc.
Analagous events happened to the Native Americans.

See Also: Michael P. Rogin, FATHERS AND CHILDREN...

----Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA

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Nellie Jo David replied on

DHS is planning 15 additional Elbit system towers in addition to those already constructed. Tohono O'odham have their lands divided by an arbitrary border, are still subjected to ongoing colonization, have to cross checkpoints to leave any point on the reservation, deal with drones and heavy artillery military vehicles regularly, and are treated quite disrespectfully - especially compared to treatment of non indigenous settlers. Border Patrol are unable to distinguish indigenous Tohono O'odham with indigenous migrants from so called South/Central America and Mexico, and all are treated as if we don't belong in our own homeland. Donald Trump would like to build a giant wall dividing Tohono O'odham people. There is an ongoing partnership between the U.S. and Israel - allowing the construction of these high tech towers, drones, and weaponry on our land. There is a direct connection that seems to be overlooked.

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Jim Miles replied on

Canada (and Australia) are examples of successful apartheid, more successful than in South Africa for its longevity and ethnic cleansing/genocide of the native populations. South Africa modelled its system on Canada's system - a combination of racist law (the Indian Act, (1876), cultural destruction (via laws and schooling), and apartheid separation policies. Israel followed both examples.

Canada now operates with double standards - an initial open attitude of the new Trudeau government towards settling indigenous issues domestically at the same time still supporting Israel without - at least publicly - commenting on its colonial settler policies in Palestine.

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D. replied on

Here is a documentary by John Pilger (who has been a needful and respected journalist for the suffering of indigenous peoples and foreign peoples at the hands of these empires US/GB/AU/CA). This particular one is his last one from his home country AU and the ongoing repression and denial of the government. Like e.i. and so many other courageous journalists...putting their lives on the line to report to the world atrocities that we need to be aware of.

http://utopiajohnpilger.co.uk/

Steven Salaita

Steven Salaita’s latest book is Uncivil Rites:  Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom.