Honour Native American Heritage Month by ending all settler-colonial oppression

The story is familiar: an indigenous population living on their land for generations is removed forcibly, killed and exploited at the hands of colonists. These colonisers cast themselves as “pioneers” and “settlers”, cloaking their actions in the euphemisms of “settlements” and systematically displacing indigenous populations to the fringes of society, stripping away their autonomy over sustenance, water, fuel and their cultural fabric and way of life.

Even without specifics like names and locations, this describes aptly the genocide of Native Americans and the establishment of the oldest settler-colonial state, the United States of America. However, this is also the story of indigenous communities around the world, including the indigenous Palestinian communities of present-day Israel and Palestine.

Biden and his administration have repeated misinformation in an attempt to obfuscate the reality of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza

We are now more than two months into the military offensive on the Palestinians in Gaza by a US-backed Israeli government that has killed almost 20,000 Palestinians, mainly women, and children. This is likely an underestimate, as more than 8,000 are missing under the rubble, and the killing continues day after day. US President Joe Biden and his administration have repeated misinformation and sown confusion in an attempt to obfuscate the reality of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza. As our government officials in Washington try to justify the unjustifiable, we have borne witness to the truth through multiple first-hand accounts of the destruction and devastation.

READ: US poll, most Americans disapprove of Biden’s management of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza

While we are consumed by the catastrophe unfolding before our eyes in Gaza, and the fact of our complicity as Americans funding genocide, we almost missed the irony that back home in the US, November was Native American Heritage Month. According to the US government, this acknowledges the history and contribution of Native Americans to the fabric of American society. President Biden noted at the end of October — even while encouraging the continued Israeli bombardment of Gaza — that he recommits to “supporting Tribal sovereignty, upholding the Federal Government’s solemn trust and treaty responsibilities, and working in partnership with Tribal Nations to advance prosperity, dignity and safety for all Native peoples.”

The hypocrisy of this statement is bewildering, given that the US government continues to support Israel, drawing no red lines in its destruction of indigenous Palestinian society, while claiming to celebrate the cultures and traditions of indigenous Americans. The parallels between America’s historical theft of land from indigenous communities — exemplified by the deliberate erasure of cultural landmarks and resources — and Israel’s actions in Palestine, such as the destruction of olive trees and illegal land expropriation, reveal a shared systematic pattern of dispossession and environmental exploitation. We are told that Israel has the right to defend itself, but wonder what defence is needed when the “offender” is a baby in an incubator or bread in a bakery.

As students whose own family histories are impacted directly by colonialism and occupiers, we recognise that while the actual land, people or time periods may be different, the truths are familiar, the harms recognisable, and the struggle for freedom from oppression is shared.

Israel’s transgressions in Gaza and the West Bank parallel the historical injustices inflicted by the US settler-colonial state upon Native Americans. Settler colonialism, as articulated by scholar Patrick Wolfe, operates on a “logic of elimination“, seeking to eliminate indigenous collectives and erase their political autonomy. The imperialist quest for land and resources aimed to cleanse the land of its Native inhabitants, resulting in the murder of 56 million indigenous people over 100 years or so in the Americas. Likewise, Israel’s Zionist doctrine, which claims the “Jewish nation’s” entitlement to Palestine, was used to justify the Nakba’s destruction of over 500 Palestinian villages and displacement of more than 750,000 Palestinians.

The legacy of the Nakba persists, manifested in the continued theft of Palestinian properties, unjustifiable loss of Palestinian life, prolonged denial of the legitimate Palestinian right to return and, now, the offensive in Gaza. Israel’s military directives and rhetoric of justification dehumanise Palestinians, reminding us all of the US strategy to control Native Americans through reservations, food leverage and massacres. In the persistent commission of crimes against humanity, there exists the deliberate targeting of vital facilities and civilian structures, an imposition of a total blockade on the already besieged territory, all of which fundamentally challenge any professed commitment to safeguarding civilians.

Heritage months are not nearly enough recognition or reparations for the genocide and systematic destruction of Native American civilisation. Instead, these holidays and symbolic gestures by settler societies reinforce power structures and seek to absolve the settler-colonists of any complicity in the continual marginalisation of indigenous communities. The apparent contradiction in Biden’s actions is obscured by his superficial acknowledgment of indigenous people, masking a deeper complexity. The month’s focus on the “contributions” of indigenous peoples to America adds another layer, suggesting that humanity and worth are contingent upon what one produces, thus intertwining identity with the value of one’s contributions to society. No action can ever fully repay the Native American community for what has been lost from colonisation. Returning land and financial reparations are a must, though. Ensuring that we do not commit these atrocities or support other powers in doing the same is also a must. And yet, the US government and its leaders are, yet again, participating in the erasure of another indigenous population, this time in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories.

One of the best ways we, as American citizens, can honour the indigenous people of the Americas is to engage with indigenous communities, understand the havoc that settler-colonialism has inflicted on their societies and not participate in the settler-colonial project of another land.

We must hold our elected officials to account, and call out the hypocrisy of acknowledging Native American Heritage Month while supporting the genocide of indigenous Palestinians in the same breath.

After all, the tactics of Israel’s assault on the indigenous Palestinian population of Gaza and the West Bank are the same strategies used in our own American foundation. We must recognise this and sound the alarm on these patterns of genocide, particularly if we are financially and politically complicit, even while they are happening and not in hindsight as an academic case study.

We must intervene before it is too late. We must support a permanent ceasefire. “Never again” must mean never again for anyone and everyone. We must honour Native American Heritage Month by ending all other settler-colonial oppression.

OPINION: The US encourages targeted assassinations to bolster Israel’s impunity

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.