On episode 57, we speak with members of the NDN Collective about their recently released position paper on Palestinian liberation - “The Right of Return is LANDBACK.”
Krystal Two Bulls, Demetrius Johnson and Nadya Tannous of the NDN Collective tell us that the resistance by Indigenous peoples to the US’ centuries-long programs of ethnic cleansing and forced relocation is strengthened by Palestinian resistance to Israeli settler-colonialism.
“Our peoples are 500 plus years into this, and we’re still resisting, we’re still fighting, we’re still holding on to our ways, our cultures, our language, our spirituality, and we’re still fighting to reclaim our relationship with the land,” says Two Bulls.
“When we’re talking about Palestine, being 74 years into settler-colonialism, and we’re seeing escalated oppression moving straight into an apartheid state, I think it’s important that we look at that, because when Palestinians go home, that means us - as Indigenous peoples here on Turtle Island - we are then closer to what our vision of sovereignty and liberation and freedom is,” she explains.
Two Bulls and Tannous began organizing together at the Standing Rock protest in 2016, when Indigenous communities led a months-long confrontation against the US government’s plans to build the Dakota Access Pipeline under the Missouri River, a natural water supply for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe.
Palestinians expressed their support and solidarity with the resistance at Standing Rock.
“Part of the commitment is not just to have an analysis around what Indigenous sovereignty and liberation looks like and what our responsibility is as people who live on this land - and also as people who have been dispossessed and are actively being dispossessed by the same monsters and same systems, the same imperialist force,” Tannous explains, “but to really confront US imperialism from the first frontline, which is Native communities.”
She adds, “That’s where the US military was developed. And without that, without the United States military marauding against Krystal’s people, against Demetrius’ people, we would not have US imperialism.”
Johnson, who also works with The Red Nation, talks about participating in a 2018 delegation to Palestine. The trip was organized by Palestinian Youth Movement and led by Tannous.
Being on the ground in Palestine, he says, helped inform his work on the position paper.
“It was literally just like home,” he says. “These are the same sights and sounds and landscapes like I see at home. I felt no disconnection.”
He explains that recognizing “the care and the history and the connection that our Palestinian relatives have taken in educating not only themselves but the people here on Turtle Island [is] what we really wanted to weave into the paper too - how would we explain this issue to our relatives?”
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14 май 2022
