Indigenous Tragedies and Struggles

From Turtle Island to Palestine:
Colonialism, Dehumanization and Solidarity
Jesse M. Zimmerman
May 13, 2009
*contact me for sources

Introductory Reflections:

In late 2003, aboriginal journalist for the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, Doug Cuthand, was notified that his column was going to be pulled from the latest issue. He was not granted an official explanation as to why this was the case, but was told informally that it was due to a perceived anti-Israel bias.1 In the unpublished article, Cuthand compares the situation in Palestine, whether it be in the West Bank or Gaza, to the continuing struggle of First Nations in Canada. He makes parallels between the processes of colonization, the mentality of settler-states, and the desires of independence and resistance on part of the colonized. Cuthand goes so far as to refer to the Palestinians as “the Indians of the Middle-East”. The article was disallowed from being published without an official explanation from the editor-in-chief. This episode exemplifies the institutionalized repression that is present in Canadian society when one comes to the topic of aboriginal as well as Palestinian rights issues. Here is presented a journalist from the indigenous community of Canada seeking common cause with oppressed indigenous peoples of another land. Cuthand effectively ties the two struggles together and faced censorship in return.

The ideology of Zionism, which was manifested in the creation of the modern nation-state of Israel, could be compared and contrasted with the colonial ideology of Western European nations. European colonialism became prevalent in nearly every part of the globe, including ‘Latin’ America, Eastern and Southern Asia, Africa, Australiasia and Oceania, the Middle East and North America. This essay will focus on the latter two locations, particularly on the Zionist colonization of historic Palestine and the colonization of Canada and the United States. Zionism emerged toward the last quarter of the nineteenth century from the same origins as European colonialism itself, for it was an ideology of both nationalist and colonialist extract.

This essay will illustrate the ideology of Zionism and how it can be called an off-shoot of European colonialism, and draw parallels between the colonization of Palestine and the colonization of North America (or Turtle Island). This will include the beliefs that were used to justify the colonial projects and the ideological frameworks behind them. In this particular section of the essay, the perspectives of the colonizers will be presented, as we evaluate the colonial ideologies of Primitivism and Orientalism. This paper will then examine the effects of colonization on the colonized; drawing on both the similarities as well as the differences between the indigenous North American experience and that of the Palestinians. The next section will scrutinize the sense of settler-state solidarity, a phenomenon that has become particularly unconcealed and made more overt, here in Canada, by the Harper Government. Finally, before fully concluding, I shall touch upon the relations between native rights movements and Palestinian solidarity movements in North America and how they intersect at times, unifying to oppose the settler-state solidarity, from below. There are many points of contrast between the two situations, but the theme of colonialism and occupation, dehumanization and the ‘othering’ of entire peoples and societies are present and these factors are reflected in the joining together of the two movements that is occurring on a grassroots level today.

Zionism and Colonialism

As stated above, political Zionism emerged in Europe as a nationalist revival movement. During this time, European colonialism was at its peak with the final scramble for Africa well under way. In this atmosphere, the ideology of Zionism came to be. Another factor that arguably assisted in the cementing of Zionism was the growing pressure on European Jews to make a choice between assimilating into their respective societies or to face continuing persecution. Zionism was thus an apparent third option to this predicament and this entailed founding a separate homeland for Jews. While the initial debate on where to do this displayed diverse possible destinations the land of Palestine emerged as the most commonly preferred place. Generations of Jews in Europe and elsewhere in the world had perceived historic Palestine or Eretez Israel as it was known in Judaism, as a place for sacred pilgrimage, but only with the arrival of the ideology of Zionism did it become a viable site for a future nation-state. In fact, in the tradition of Judaism, Jews are instructed to await the coming of the Messiah before they can be given a land of their own, which explains why several Ultra-Orthodox Jews are not Zionists, such as Neturei Karta. The first steps towards realizing the Zionist project were small, with relatively small Jewish migration to the region. At this time, Palestine was officially under the tutelage of Great Britain. Throughout the time of the British Mandate virtually every Palestinian Arab leader had requested the creation of an independent state in Palestine, which the British did promise to them for their help in fighting the Ottomans in the First World War. In 1917, however, the British officially promised the land to the Zionists as a Jewish Homeland in the Balfour Declaration. This decision prompted uprisings by the Palestinian leadership. The British responded by stationing more troops in Palestine than it had in the entire Indian subcontinent at the time, disbanding the resistance militias and exiling the Palestinian leaders. The Palestinian resistance had been terribly weakened and this gave the Zionist movement an advantage. Years of diplomacy granted a partition plan for Palestine to be divided into two states, an Arab and a Jewish State, yet in 1942 the Zionist leadership made its first demand for all of the land for itself.

The Zionists prepared themselves for Plan Dalet, which called for the systematic expulsion of Palestinian Arabs from their homeland and started in early December 1947. Sporadic attacks against Palestinian villages commenced, beginning the first phases of ethnic cleansing. On the 9th of January a few small units of the first Arab volunteer army from neighbouring Arab states entered Palestine to intervene. In May, Britain officially pulled out of Mandatory Palestine in order for the newly formed United Nations to oversee the partition plan, which the Arabs had rejected due to disadvantages they were given in the process. Under the cover of war, Zionist militias such as the Hagana and the Irgun, among others, committed their cleansing operations, occupying Arab villages, inducing the residents into exodus through terrorist acts and massacres. Common Zionist narrative explains the victory of the Jewish militias as a miraculous event, often likening it to a David and Goliath battle, as the precursors to the state of Israel fought off the various Arab armies. The narrative also regularly claims that the proceeding Palestinian refugee situation were merely an accidental by-product of the war. Strong evidence actually shows these two conjectures to be false, for the Zionist militias had superior firepower, numbers, organization and command, which had determined their victory, and the Palestinian refugee crisis was premeditated by the Zionist leaders.

The state of Israel was thus born over the ruins of Palestine. The indigenous people fled to the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, southern Lebanon, as well as other parts of the Arab world. In 1967, Israel through war with neighbouring Jordan and Egypt came to possess and occupy the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Although officially ‘withdrawing’ from Gaza, Israel still controls all airspace and patrols the coast. Settlements that are illegal by international law are continuing to be built in the West Bank, as well as roads that are only to be used by settlers. The Israeli state is committing actions that are being labeled as apartheid worldwide, often being compared to South Africa under the apartheid regime.

The exodus and creation of the Palestinian refugee crisis is known in Arabic as the ‘Nakba’ and it did not end once the initial ethnic cleansing operations ended. Similar to the colonization of Turtle Island, the Nakba is a continuing tragedy and the colonization of both lands continues to this day. The words of an activist demonstrate these comparisons:

"The current plight of Palestinians increasingly resembles the tragic demise of Native Americans. To have become refugees in their own land, hounded and derided by a superior military and economic entity, and to have endured mostly apathy from the outside world as well as the inevitable corruption and authoritarianism of ‘their own leaders’ are markers of both experiences."

Primitivism vs. Orientalism

The comparisons that I draw between the Zionist colonization of the land of historic Palestine and that of Europeans in North America shall begin with the mentalities and ideological frameworks of the colonizers themselves. Both ideologies were quick to marginalize the indigenous peoples of the respective lands and create justifications for the seizure of land and resources for the exclusive use of European colonizers. In North America, the European colonizers justified the conquest of the indigenous populations by employing an argument that the First Peoples were not putting their land to what they (the colonizers) deemed to be proper use. This view has its origins in modern liberal theory and colonial mainstream narrative generally downplays the many accomplishments of aboriginal civilizations. This rhetoric entails that the colonizers’ actions were beneficial for overall human progress is used to reconcile mass dispossession, genocide and ethnic cleansing. In the case of Palestine, on the other hand, a mainstream Zionist myth often insists that historic Palestine was empty at the time of the Zionist movement and that it was in fact ‘a land without a people, for a people without a land’.
This is simply untrue and no serious scholar would disagree that it is categorically false. Both North America and Palestine witnessed a conquest of foreign powers (industrialized, or in the process of industrializing) that viewed the indigenous societies as inferior, or non-existent. There is some clear contrast here, but the themes of marginalization and the overlooking of the natives are present.

The ideologies of Primitivism and Orientalism were colonial constructs that further served to justify the theft of lands and destruction of cultures that ensued. Primitivism is a colonial construct that was/is applied to various indigenous groups. It often entails a vision of pre-civilization and a direct connection to nature. This is where the patronizing image of the ‘noble savage’ is derived. Some cases of primitivism seek to romanticize the respective peoples, other times it seeks to demonize, but in all cases, it inevitably de-humanizes. The primitive person is viewed thus as one who requires a type of patriarchal guidance in the ways of civilization. The Spaniards, the very first colonizers of the Americas, exemplified a potent case of this patrimony and dehumanization. The colonizers had plans to enslave the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, yet official policy prohibited this, as it was the Crown and Church’s intention to save the souls of the subjected peoples. A royal proclamation declared in 1503 that enslavement was only permitted in cases of peoples who practiced cannibalism. Shortly after this decree, stories started emerging from the Caribbean of rampant cannibalism, which lead to the enslavement of most peoples of the region. This case illustrates two major purposes of Primitivism: to dehumanize the people and justify their subjection by the conquerors.

Orientalism is a separate subject but carries on a very similar theme. It is a perspective on the Orient from the eyes of the Occident, or the West. Edward Said once called it “particularly valuable as a sign of European-Atlantic power over the Orient that it is as a veridic discourse about the Orient”. This ideological framework has its origins in the Greco-Roman tradition, viewing the East (often the Near East) in terms of an ‘otherness’. Geographical boundaries thus divided the world and the human race into supposedly fixed categories in terms of society and culture. Distance creates an ‘other’, an opposing ‘them’ in direct opposition to a familiar ‘us’. Orientalism became widespread in Western academic discourse during the colonial era, when European powers, primarily Britain and France began to appropriate colonies in the Middle East. Along with the dehumanization of the Arabs and the Islamic World, arrived the colonial item of patrimonial domination and a sense of the colonizers comprehending the interests of the colonized more sufficiently than they themselves could do.

There is some contrast between these two concepts. Primitivism envisions a state of pre-civilization whereas Orientalism presupposes a symmetrical but inferior counterpart to the Occident. In both cases, we find the assumption of a Eurocentric chronological view, as well as definition of civilization. Despite their differences, it is clear that both the discourses of Primitivism and Orientalism cause a dehumanization and an ‘othering’ of the subjugated peoples and create suppositions that the colonizers ultimately have the best interests of those peoples at heart, even more so than the peoples themselves. Orientalism, it is arguable, came from the same origins and mentality as Primitivism. Orientalism became prominent in use among the British and French and is carried on through the policies and views of the United States and Israel.

Common Loss of Culture & Identity

The indigenous peoples of North America and the Palestinians both experienced an immense loss of culture, but the ways in which this occurred vary. Native languages of Turtle Island have largely been erased whereas Palestinians still speak their native tongue of Arabic. Remnants of the indigenous character of the land remain in North America, in place names for instance, whereas in Israel proper place names were purposely changed to rub out any evidence of the previous residents. Indigenous peoples in Canada experienced a cultural genocide, exemplified by the government residential school systems. Palestinians, on the other hand, are commonly denied recognition as a unique culture and a people. In two very different ways, both experiences yield similar results: denial of culture and identity.

In both cases of brutal dispossession, the state itself refused responsibility for some of its worst excesses. Two cases that I shall contrast to illustrate this are the Sand Creek Massacre committed by the United States cavalry in 1864 and the Deir Yassin massacre in 1948. Quite often, the responsibility for the massacre at Sand Creek is attributed to the individual of Colonel Chivington, whereas Deir Yassin is commonly, even today, attributed to an over-zealous militia commanded by Menachem Begin. These two instances were not the cause of individual judgments but rather part of a larger picture of colonial ideologies, whether Manifest Destiny or Zionism. Another notable similarity is the use of warfare to increase the frontiers of the colonial constructions. The War of 1812 was used as a means of expansion into Indian territory, as the Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967 were similarly used to push its own boundaries by taking Arab lands. On a similar route, the American state encouraged landless whites to move westward towards the frontier, serving as a buffer between the Eastern seaboard and the native nations, forcing these settlers to become dependent on the U.S. government for protection whilst displacing the indigenous peoples at the same time. The Israeli state used the kibbutzim movement to settle territory and safeguard Israel proper from the Arab territories, paving the way for further incursions and land grabs.

A particular case that is both ironical and produces a glimpse of a greater link is that of the uranium that is mined on stolen land in Pine Ridge, then made into uranium tipped missiles, sold to Israel and dropped in Gaza. Thus far, this paper has illustrated the methods and ideals of the colonizers and the contrasting yet thematically similar effects of the colonized. Next, I shall describe themes of linking the two struggles into a larger picture and the solidarity that takes place from both above and below.

Solidarity: From Above and Below

Before delving into the relations between natives and Palestinians in Canada and the United States, it is important to mention an institutionalized form of solidarity that I dub ‘settler-state solidarity’. Recently four nations voted against the United Nations Declarations on Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand—all European-based settler-states. Representatives from these four nations and others, including Israel, walked out during the United Nations Conference on Racism. Canadian policy in regards to the Israel/Palestine issue is particularly telling, with Canadian complicity in the current apartheid system quite overt to any discerning citizen. The barrier wall that bisects the West Bank to protect encroaching Israeli settlements and pave the way for more annexations is technically considered legitimate by Canada, so long as Israel builds it on its own territory. Of course, with such an unsettled border definition it is impossible to measure this. The Canadian government of Stephen Harper and the Conservatives demonstrated its settler-state solidarity with Israel when it was the first country in the world to vote for sanctions against the people of Gaza in response to their electing a government headed by Hamas. This vote was followed by the United States and other settler nations, in another example of settler-state solidarity from above.

The First Nations actions and reactions toward the case of Palestine has been largely a mixed bag. Jim Miles, a Canadian activist/journalist, in an article entitled Canada Report – Reaching for Subnation Status, details the instances of settler-state solidarity. Miles details episodes of indigenous communities in Canada declaring solidarity with Israel, which has surprised him. Miles describes an article on a program that enabled twenty-three Inuit to travel to Israel in a spirit of camaraderie and to conduct cultural exchanges. Furthermore, he observes a website from the Assembly of First Nations that depicts another program that allowed First Nations leaders to learn how their Israeli counterparts have successfully preserved their historic culture and language. Miles explains his apprehension at these discoveries, perhaps
understanding why there would be a sense of understanding with Jewish Holocaust survivors, but faulting them for their lack of comprehension of the struggles of the Palestinians. Miles notes the similarities between the Palestinian struggle and that of the indigenous peoples of North America, most of which I have already covered above. More radical and grassroots indigenous organizations take a different perspective. The American Indian Movement makes the direct comparison between the two cases. AIM makes the connections between the two settler-states, the criminalization of the resisters and the corruption of the supposed leaders, making comparisons with AIM and Hamas while comparing the corrupt native leaders with the PLO, as well as the vilification of resisters and dehumanization of both peoples in the media. AIM also makes the necessary comparisons between ideologies such as Manifest Destiny and Zionism.

Canada itself has an indigenous movement that takes on various forms, depending on the location and the situation of the respective indigenous nations. In many parts of the country, these communities face land dispossession and degradation. Like the Palestinian Nakba, the theft of native lands did not end after the initial colonization projects but continues into the present day. Aboriginal communities resist cases of land theft and strive for self-governance from coast to coast to coast. Cases in point are the various struggles faced by the peoples of the Six Nations here in Ontario.

On February 28th 2006, members of this community fought to maintain land that was appropriated by a construction company that had been given the permission of the Canadian government. Many of these resisters now face charges in Canadian courts due to their stance against further colonization of their lands. This example is detailed on a North American-based solidarity group’s website that focuses primarily on the Palestinian cause called Stop The Wall. This group makes a direct link between the two struggles:
500 years ago empires and their missionaries spread Christianity and civilization with their swords. Today, these empires and their TV channels spread their so-called “freedom” and “democracy” with cluster bombs. The truth behind this ‘democratization’ became clear when we practiced their democracy, albeit under Israeli occupation and apartheid. The international community imposed on us a brutal siege for not choosing their candidates to lead us...After the swords, in the Americas came the agreements. Agreements were to settle land “disputes” for lasting peace. The violations and renegotiations of these agreements by the colonizers – in other words the continuation of land theft – are proverbial today. Here in Palestine, we are facing the same colonial tactics.

Palestinian Canadians are in an interesting and what some might call a contradictory state, being exiled from their own indigenous homeland yet being part of a settler-state on someone else’s indigenous land. Despite, or perhaps because of this, connections between groups in both movements are being created. Grassroots organizations like Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA) and its strictly campus-based subgroup Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) make these links as well. A common theme that unites both causes is the desire of autonomy in the face of an overwhelming power. In Tyendinaga, Mohawk Territory, not far from Belleville, Ontario, a cultural resurgence has followed a bold stance of resistance on the part of the community. The Mohawks from Tyendinaga have been resisting encroachments on their land by often erecting roadblocks on rail lines and highways and have sought autonomy from the economy of the Canadian state with an alternative economy based on a traditional tobacco industry. This has lifted many members of the community out of poverty and has assisted in the development of the community as a whole. These trends also led to the building of a new Longhouse, a central point of the community, and the first one in over a hundred years. Members of Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid helped fund this project, solidifying a solidarity base from below. These are just a few examples of how, on the ground in many communities, the struggles of the Palestinians and the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island are becoming linked and a greater global movement is currently being forged. It is a common bond in a uniting front against worldwide colonialism and racism.

Concluding Reflections:

This paper closes where it began, with Doug Cuthand’s banned article, a particular episode that makes the bonds between these two struggles so clear:

"Over the years I have maintained a sympathetic point of view toward the Palestinians. I see them as the Indians of the Middle East. The history is hauntingly familiar. The Palestinians lost their land. They were placed in camps similar to reservations and they have been colonized and controlled by an outside force. As a First Nations person in Canada I see in them an enormous parallel. . . . The Israelis also built their nation on other people’s land but they regard any sign of dissent as terrorism. . . . The demonization of a people and their leadership is a blunt instrument used to get the public on side. As First Nations people we have witnessed the attacks on our leadership. . . . Over the years the United States has supported the State of Israel alienating it from the larger Middle Eastern community. American and Canadian media carry a definite bias toward Israel and at times it can be racist in its condemnation of the Palestinians. . . .

Overcrowding continues in the Palestinian camps and people live in poverty with no hope for the future. The very use of the word ‘settler’ indicates a Wild West mentality and strengthens the parallel between our two groups . . . I’ll probably be accused of being anti-Semitic and that’s not the case. I am against any group of people pushing another nation off their traditional land. It is a story my people have lived for seven generations."

It is clear that these struggles share a common theme in their implementation, effects on the colonized and justifications and ideologies espoused by the colonizers. These two instances of struggle and resistance are only two of many that can be linked in the global system of domination, subjugation and repression. Through these twin struggles first came the common resistance chant “From Turtle Island to Palestine: Occupation is a Crime”.