Outrage Over ‘Cynical’ Indigenous Peoples Day Amid Claims of Gaza Genocide!

On Monday, human rights advocates highlighted the parallels between the decolonization efforts of Native Americans and Palestinians, criticizing the irony of celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day in the United States while it continues to support Israel’s military actions in Gaza. These actions are currently under scrutiny for alleged genocide at the International Court of Justice.

“A few years back, Native activists persuaded their city councils to supplant Columbus Day—a day that glorifies the Italian explorer known for devastating Native societies—with Indigenous Peoples Day, which honors the resilience of Native peoples against over 500 years of colonial oppression starting from Columbus’s arrival,” stated Benay Blend, a Jewish American scholar, in The Palestine Chronicle.

“This occasion also serves to underscore the solidarity among Indigenous groups across the Americas and with other Indigenous populations, including the Palestinians,” Blend continued. “Both groups share a narrative of resisting colonization, while their colonizers—the United States and Israel—utilize similar foundational narratives and strategies to disconnect Indigenous people from their lands.”

Citing Steven Salaita, a Palestinian American professor whose tenure offer at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana was withdrawn in 2014 due to his critique of Israeli military actions in Gaza, Blend pointed out that “both Israel and North America use similar language to justify their colonial origins.”

“Filled with biblical allusions to ‘salvation, redemption, and destiny,’ settlers in both nations believed they had arrived in the Promised Land, where they were divinely instructed to displace the Indigenous inhabitants to make room for more arable land that had been ‘underutilized and unappreciated by the natives,'” she added.

In a social media post that included video of Israel’s recent bombardment of a displacement camp at the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Central Gaza, Uahikea Maile—a Native Hawaiian professor specializing in race, diaspora, and indigeneity at the University of Chicago—remarked, “Indigenous Peoples Day is about remembering our survival and persistence despite settler colonialism—fighting against extinction as distinct peoples.”

“If your celebration doesn’t criticize Israel’s reckless destruction of Palestinian lives, then it inadvertently supports settler colonization,” he added.

Samoan poet and educator Terisa Siagatonu emphasized that “Palestinians are an Indigenous people” and “a free Palestine is an Indigenous struggle.”

“I keep repeating this as clearly as I can because I feel this isn’t being sufficiently addressed, and it’s crucial,” she stressed.

Nick Estes, a Lakota community organizer and historian at the University of Minnesota, commented that “the hypocritical ‘celebration’ of Indigenous Peoples Day by a colonial state that supports another colonial state’s genocide against Palestinians and Lebanese underscores that nothing is sacred, not even our survival, until we eliminate colonialism entirely.”

In response to a proclamation by U.S. President Joe Biden recognizing tribal sovereignty and self-determination, Jeff Schuhrke, a labor historian and professor at Empire State University, criticized those “marking Indigenous Peoples Day while aiding the ongoing colonial eradication of Palestine’s Indigenous population.”

On Indigenous Peoples Day, the U.S. direct action group Jewish Voice for Peace organized a protest where over 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 the Adalah Justice Project, told The Indypendent that “the fact that the United States claims to support and honor Indigenous people… while they’re actively sponsoring and financing the ethnic cleansing of an Indigenous population in Palestine contradicts their statements.”

Rick Tabenunaka, a member of the Comanche Nation and leftist organizer who hosts the “Decolonized Buffalo” podcast, stated on social media, “It’s ironic that settlers claim Indigenous peoples in North America aren’t doing enough to combat settler colonialism.”

“Yet,” he expressed, “these same settlers spent a whole year observing their colonial government support genocide in Palestine and did nothing.”