Human Rights Defenders Decry 'Cynical' Indigenous Peoples Day Celebration Amid Gaza Genocide

Human rights defenders on Monday underscored the links between the decolonization struggles of Native Americans and Palestinians—and the hypocrisy of celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day while the United States provides military aid and diplomatic support for Israel as it wages a war on Gaza for which it is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.

"Several years ago Native activists successfully rallied their city councils to replace Columbus Day, the day that honors the Italian explorer who was a destroyer of Native worlds, with Indigenous Peoples Day, a holiday that celebrates the Natives who have resisted colonial oppression for over 500 years, since the arrival of Christopher Columbus," Jewish American scholar Benay Blend wrote for The Palestine Chronicle.

"It is also a good time to highlight Indigenous solidarity within the Americas as well as with other Indigenous people, including the Palestinians," Blend said. "Indeed, both people share a similar story of resistance to colonization, while the colonizers—the United States and Israel—share similar origin stories and tactics used to sever the Native people from their land."

Citing Steven Salaita—the Palestinian American professor of American Indian studies whose offer of a tenured position at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana was rescinded in 2014 over his criticism of Israeli bombing of Gaza—Blend noted that "both Israel and North America share similar rhetoric that justifies their origins."

"Infused with biblical references to 'salvation, redemption, and destiny,' settlers in both countries believed that they had reached the Promised Land, where God commanded them to eliminate the Indigenous populations to make way for more fertile land that had previously been 'underused and unappreciated by the natives,'" she added.

In a social media post that included video footage of Israel's bombing on Monday of a displaced people's encampment on the grounds of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, Uahikea Maile—a Native Hawaiian professor of race, diaspora, and indigenity at the University of Chicago—said on social media that "Indigenous Peoples Day is about commemorating our survival and endurance despite settler colonialism—resisting annihilation as distinct people."

"If your celebration doesn't condemn Israel's wanton destruction of Palestinian life, then it recklessly shores up settler colonization," he added.

Samoan poet and educator Terisa Siagatonu stressed that "Palestinians are an Indigenous people" and "a free Palestine is an Indigenous struggle."

"I'm saying this over and over again as clear as I can because I don't believe people are contending with this enough, and you need to," she added.

Nick Estes, a Lakota community organizer and University of Minnesota historian, asserted that "the cynical 'celebration' of Indigenous Peoples Day by a settler state backing another settler state's genocide against Palestinians and Lebanese shows us nothing is sacred, not even our own survival, until we bury colonialism once and for all."

Responding to an Indigenous Peoples Day proclamation by U.S. President Joe Biden "respecting tribal sovereignty and self-determination," labor historian, author, and Empire State University professor Jeff Schuhrke took a swipe at those "commemorating Indigenous Peoples Day while simultaneously facilitating the real-time colonial extermination of Palestine's Indigenous people."

The U.S. direct action group Jewish Voice for Peace chose Indigenous Peoples Day to stage a protest at which more than 200 activists were arrested while demanding an end to U.S. military aid to Israel. Sumaya Awad, a Palestinian American spokesperson for the event and member of Adalah Justice Project, toldThe Indypendent that "the fact that the United States claims to stand with and honor Indigenous people... while they're actively funding and financially backing the ethnic cleansing of an Indigenous population in Palestine is contradictory to their statements."

Rick Tabenunaka, a member of the Comanche Nation and leftist organizer who hosts the "Decolonized Buffalo" podcast, said on social media, "I find it ironic that settlers will claim that Indigenous peoples on the North 'American' continent aren't doing enough to fight against settler colonialism."

"Yet," he lamented, "these same settlers spent a whole year watching their colonial government support genocide in Palestine and did nothing."