It’s always families who are left to pick up the pieces

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/11/2023 (716 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In 1845, after a century long battle over territory between the Anishinaabe and Métis on one side and the Dakota and Lakota on the other, the Dakota leaders sent a letter to Cuthbert Grant in what is now St. James in Winnipeg.

They had a radical suggestion on how to stop the genocide of each other’s families.

“He who killed my son should be my son in his stead,” Ne-Tai Ope wrote.

“I have a nephew. He who killed him, I wish to be my nephew,” Tah Wah Chan Can wrote.

“I wish the brave who killed my brother, should be my brother,” Hai To Ke Yan wrote.

The Indigenous solution to war in Manitoba — which the two sides agreed to — was to recognize their relatedness.

To become truly a family.

This brings me to the current conflict in the Middle East, sparked by the brutal atrocities perpetrated by Hamas against innocent Israeli citizens on October 7.

Since then, Israeli Defence Forces have sought to eradicate Hamas but their assaults and bombing has come at the cost of thousands of innocent Palestinians — and particularly children.

Meanwhile, the world watches, wondering what to do.

Last week, the website Red Nation issued a Indigenous Solidarity with Palestine collective statement signed by hundred of Indigenous writers, academics and activists, calling for “a ceasefire to halt more state-sanctioned Palestinian death” and “an end to all foreign military aid from the United States and Canada to Israel.”

Some may be confused by this action. Indigenous peoples are not inherently anti-Israel or against its claims to Indigenity.

Most are, however, against “international support” that empowers “settler colonialism, apartheid and occupation.”

In other words, Indigenous peoples see a lot of hypocrisy when the countries with the most brutal legacies surrounding Indigenous peoples endorse Israel’s claims of Indigeneity.

The problem for most Indigenous peoples isn’t Israel’s claim of Indigeneity; it’s what has been done to justify their claim.

The problem for most Indigenous peoples isn’t Israel’s claim of Indigeneity; it’s what has been done to justify their claim.

There are currently five internationally recognized Indigenous communities in Palestine and specifically the West Bank; the Jahalin Bedouin (the largest group), the al-Kaabneh, al-Azazmeh, al-Ramadin, and al-Rshaida.

Most of these communities live in southern rural areas of the West Bank, around Hebron, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Jericho and the Jordan Valley, and all were forcibly displaced by Israeli military in the years following the 1948 creation of Israel.

Since the 1995 Oslo Accords, Israel was given jurisdiction over the majority of the West Bank and has systematically displaced Indigenous farmers and their herds alongside entire communities — denying land claims and rights and decrying their “rapid growth” in population.

Starting in 2010, Israel began to aggressively and forcibly remove and relocate tens of thousands of Bedouin from their “unrecognized villages” to “government-planned villages” — prompting former UN special Rapporteur of Indigenous Peoples James Anaya to call on Israel to stop “racially discriminatory” policies and cease “any forced relocations.”

In a letter to Anaya, government officials simply stated: “the State of Israel does not accept the classification of its Bedouin citizens as an indigenous people.”

While claiming they are the only Indigenous peoples in the area, Israel has also ironically abstained from voting to endorse the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Which brings me to Palestine.

I could spend a hundred columns trying to articulate the debate on Palestinian Indigeneity. I will simply say this: Palestinians claim they are. Israel says they are not.

Israel’s main argument is that Islamic peoples who say they are Palestinians are Arabian migrants who have no origins in what is now Israel and there is no evidence in texts like the Quran to suggest otherwise.

Israel also argues an Islamic “Palestinian” identity did not emerge until around the 1960s with Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

Islamic Palestinians, in the meantime, point out two central arguments.

One, that Arabian and Jewish people — according to the holy texts of both peoples — descended from two brothers, Isaac and Ishmael, who were both fathered by Abraham (an ancestor of Noah) and born in Hebron around 3,700 years ago.

This makes them people from the same family and birthed in the same place.

Second, DNA evidence supports this. In 2020, Tel Aviv University published a study that showed that most Jewish and Palestinians share ancestry with “over 90 samples of ancient DNA extracted from remains found in Israel-Palestine and surrounding areas from over 3,000 years ago.”

So, science suggests they are the same people too.

Of course, the conflict between Palestine and Israel is not as simple as that; but it certainly explains the brutality. Anyone who knows how personal, bloody and everlasting a family fight is knows what I mean.

It also suggests a solution.

Indigenous communities who warred with one another across Turtle Island learned one central truth at the end of killing each other: it is families — and particularly elders and children — who suffer the most.

It is also families who are left to pick up the pieces.

niigaan.sinclair@winnipegfreepress.com