We encourage individuals and organizations to sign on to this statement at the form below in support, or email your endorsement to [email protected].
A statement from Palestinians and Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island: Our land is our life, it’s not up for grabs!
We, a group of autonomous and sovereign Palestinians, and Indigenous people of Turtle Island, call upon the world’s Indigenous Peoples to join us this Land Day (Yom al-Ard) in unity against genocide, ecocide, colonialism, imperialism and fascism.
March 30 is commemorated by Palestinians every year since 1976 as Land Day (Yom al-Ard), a day of unity, struggle, and recommitment to our precious land. This is an international day to celebrate and fight for land and liberation everywhere.
The colonial mind describes land as “property” or a “resource” but we reject this violent notion. The land that we belong to is a living relative which we care for and love. The land gave us our languages and our cultures; it ties us to our past and bridges to our futures and the coming faces. Indigenous Peoples around the world are the inherent stewards of the land and we honour our obligations and responsibility to protect the land and stand in solidarity with those who are experiencing oppression under the same colonial powers.
As Indigenous peoples in so-called Canada, we must stand in solidarity with Indigenous Palestinians in what has been dubbed the world’s last anti-colonial struggle, because we have a shared history of genocide and subjugation. “[The] acts of genocide by the Government of Israel against Palestinians for over 75 years closely mirror that of the histories of the genocide of First Nations on Turtle Island – from ethnic cleansing, ecocide, targeting of women and children, forced starvation, systematic destruction of Indigenous knowledge systems and displacement and dispossession from our territories.” Moreover, Israel’s apartheid laws and Canada’s Indian Act were both designed to displace, replace, disconnect and isolate both Palestinians and Indigenous Peoples from our homelands and our ways of life.
More recently, US President Donald Trump pontificated on the future of Gaza saying it should be emptied of its Palestinian inhabitants and turned into a US-controlled “Riviera” for the wealthy elite. He has also repeatedly suggested that the unceded and Treaty lands of Canada become the 51st state, and his administration is seeking to acquire Greenland, which is Inuit land.
All together, this is an attack on Indigenous sovereignty, identity, and self-determination. While it would be reassuring to dismiss his words as impossible ravings, we cannot afford to do so. Our Peoples have been living, surviving and struggling through genocide for over 500 years, now is not the time to let up.
The current siege, bombardment, and ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the annexation of the West Bank have exposed the israeli and western facade of civility. We are left witnessing the genocide of Palestinians fuelled by blatant racism and greed – backed by the world’s largest military and nuclear force.
The genocide and war crimes committed by the colonizers on Indigenous lands, whether in Palestine, on Turtle Island or around the world will never be able to defeat the people, our sovereignty or our will to be as we are. We affirm that we have the right to defend our lands from encroachment, exploitation and extraction. The lands we belong to are not free for the taking, they are our lifeblood. Simply put, the land is us. We will confront all forms of colonial control and domination, for the liberation of our land and our people. We are going nowhere except to our homes and lands; there is no future for colonial genocide.
The genocide against the Palestinian people today, whether in their homeland or in diaspora and exile, echoes the intended eradication of nations and tribes at the hands of colonizers while they continue to occupy our homelands for 500 years.
We have never ceded our lands and international Indigenous resistance against the empire has never ceased. Now is the moment to confront – through protest and direct action – imperialist and colonial states confiscating and occupying our land, but also the corporations profiting from its desecration. Our conjoined fight against Trump’s war machine, from Canadian mining corporations stealing Latin America’s land and disappearing the Indigenous People, to the US-led global multinationals plundering the wealth and produce of the people of the Philippines both binds us and informs us.
The United States and Canada have built their wealth on the theft of Indigenous lands and the theft and exploitation of African people and their resources, and have used that stolen wealth to prop up a Zionist colonial project in occupied Palestine. And yet — these hoards of stolen wealth are also not enough to satisfy the greed of the imperialists. The brutal face of these forces is on full display to all.
We call upon the people of the world to honor the struggle of Palestinians and of Indigenous Peoples this Land Day and beyond through action and organizing, and through adopting (not co-opting) the wisdom Indigenous Peoples have used to care for their lands through the years: for social justice, for socialism, for human dignity.
With deep love, we draw a path for our next generation by refusing to look away from barbarity and genocide. This is a call to collectively create a new blueprint for the future as a demonstration of the intergenerational strength and commitment we carry. Together we will smash oppression into oblivion.
Free the people. Free the Land. Free Palestine.
Indigenous peoples of the world, unite!
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