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Friday, September 16, 2016

Do Native Americans know they are being used by Palestinian activists?

I received an email from "End the Occupation" about a protest this weekend:

As the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe continues their resistance to the U.S. government’s plan to install an oil pipeline on Native land, thePalestinian Youth Movement (PYM) has organized a caravan of Palestinians and allies arriving today in North Dakota to stand in solidarity

Artwork in solidarity with Standing Rock and the water protectors. (Leila Abdelrazaq)
The proposed route of the pipeline runs through an area of Sioux land that is of utmost cultural, spiritual, and environmental significance. There are historic burial grounds, village grounds, and Sundance sites that would be directly impacted. The pipeline is also supposed to run under the Missouri River, whose water is essential to life on the Standing Rock Reservation.  

Palestinians are expressing solidarity with this resistance, recognizing the similar experiences of violent settler colonialism Native American and First Nation peoples continue to endure. 
While working to end all US support for Israeli settler colonialism that continues to steal the land and resources of the indigenous Palestinian population, it is essential for Palestinian rights activists here torecognize the settler colonial nature of the United States and challenge the continuing denial of the rights of Native nations and their people. 

The cynicism of these "pro-Palestinian activists" who live in territory that used to be Native American land and pretending suddenly to be against the "settler colonialism" that their homes and universities are built upon would be astonishing if we already didn't see that same cynicism every day in all the other claims they make.

One of the people signing this was Anna Baltzer,  who is quite American and hasn't as far as I can tell burned her US passport in solidarity with Native Americans.

My question is, do the Native Americans realize that this support is not exactly wholehearted and that they are being used, and ultimately will be hijacked, by their supposed benefactors?




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