I have been asked several times why indigenous status matters. The question is highly complex but at the same time, it’s really simple. Look at the Middle East and you will see the difference between indigenous people and those descended from colonisers simply by one overlooked, yet obvious distinction. The willingness to openly fight for their ancestral lands against all odds.
Coloniser people follow the cultural imperative to acquire, they do not have strong ties to the land, why would they? They can always take more from someone else.
Indigenous people will fight. Now I know there are all sorts of excuses for why a people will not fight: “they don’t have enough weapons”; “ the other side is too powerful”; “nobody will help”; “ they might get wiped out”. But between you, me and the internet, none of those reasons matter to actual indigenous people. Actual indigenous people understand that without the land, we have nothing and our lives become worthless and meaningless. So we do not simply run away when confronted with someone trying to take our lands, we stand and we fight. Because any other decision would be unthinkable. Even when we lose a battle, we still fight on.
A coloniser feels no such tie, to a coloniser land is simply a possession, to be owned, and if something can be owned, it can be given up. Think about it this way: if you have taken something from someone else its only value is the value you as the taker, ascribe it. That value will never be higher than the value of your life because, after all, you can always get more possessions, you only have one life.
This is why you see certain culture/ethnicities with migration and immigration tendencies. If you have no cultural or spiritual ties to somewhere, then you will just look for a better place to live. The migrants in the Middle East are a case in point. Why would someone from Syria, whose family probably only got there a few generations ago at most, feel any more ties to Damascus than Milwaukee? His sacred sites, as an Arab Muslim, are in what is now Saudi Arabia: his language developed in Saudi Arabia. His family was in Damascus for a few generations, so his ties, other than nationalism, do not run deep. Nationalism is a recent creation, how deep can ties to a country only created as a nation in the middle part of the 20th century actually run?
Arabs moved around a lot after the Muslim conquests of the Levant. People forget that modern nations in the Middle East are a recent creation of European colonialism. The Ottoman empire was a creation of Muslim colonialism and had different borders and limitations. Indigenous nations are ancient. It was no big deal for a Muslim to move from what is now Yemen, to Persia, to the Levant. So ties to the land were superceded by ties to tribe and Islam. Indigenous nations were not that mobile, we stayed in our specific territories even during colonisation.
There are historic examples indigenous nations fighting against coloniser peoples
In Canada, the Metis uprising came after we declared a state of our own on our ancestral lands. The Canadian government then, basically, declared war on us. The Metis literally fought until we ran out of bullets, then we melted down every scrap of metal we had and we fought some more until we literally ran out of gunpowder. My family has a story about melting down family heirloom gold jewelry in order to have something to shoot at the Canadian military. We didn’t make grand pronouncements of resistance while running away or attacking civilians, we manned up and fought for our land against overwhelming odds. We lost, but we have never stopped fighting to regain what is ours, we just changed battlefields. Now we fight in the courts and in politics.
In the United States, the American Indians of many nations fought back. Despite being starved, lacking weapons and slowly being pushed north, they fought against an enemy that seemed limitless. While they have been herded onto reservations, they are still fighting back in the courts to regain at least some of their ancestral lands.
In the Middle Eastern context, the Yezidi and Kurds are fighting tooth and nail against ISIS, refusing to give up and fighting with little or no support. They refuse to concede their ancestral lands and even though they were losing at first, they have made great gains and basically stopped the creeping growth of the Islamic State. This despite countries like Turkey pretty much funding the military of ISIS and giving them weapons and ammunition. There are also indigenous peoples in Muslim countries who are regaining their heritage, retaking their languages, and even in some cases reviving their pre-Islamic religions. Because to be indigenous is to know and understand who you are.
A few years ago there was another group of indigenous people fighting to regain their ancestral lands. They had few weapons, they had no support and they were given no chance to win yet, despite those challenges, challenges that look to a modern observer as insurmountable obstacles, that nation not only defeated the entire Arab World, but did it with alacrity and elan.
They not only managed to win back the majority of their ancestral land, they held it and defended it 2 more times. That people knows what it’s like to be marginalised, oppressed and displaced, those people understand how important their sacred places and their ancestral lands really are. They understood that regaining self determination in their ancestral lands was a prize worth risking everything for and they had waited two thousand years for it. When they got the chance they not only went home, they rebuilt it.
They literally did what seemed impossible: they reclaimed salt marsh into arable land; they made the desert bloom; they replanted forests. They could have more easily forged a nation elsewhere, but they understood that an indigenous people needs to be on its ancestral land, even if they didn’t actually understand the terminology, they felt it. They went home. They could no more give up their ancestral lands than they could give up their lives because without one the other is meaningless. This is the central tenet of Zionism, the return to Zion. Going Home.
So when I, an indigenous Metis, am asked about the importance of indigenous status, it is simple: our ties to our ancestral lands give us the strength to carry on through great hardships, to survive what seems to be unsurvivable. It nourishes us when we are starving. It gives us strength when we are weak to know that we always have our homeland. It really is that simple.
This is why Indigenous people fight when our lands are threatened, because the land doesn’t really belong to us, again, things that belong to us are possessions and we can live without possessions. Indigenous people belong to the land, our ancestors blood fed the land and we are part of the land, without the land we know we are just itinerant travellers with no homes, and home is everything, Home is the reason we exist at all. That is why the fact that we are indigenous is important.
OMG, Ryan, another magnificent statement! Meaning no disrespect to your colleagues, but I think you’re the most eloquent regular here at Israellycool.
I appreciate the kind words but there are a lot of really eloquent people at Israellycool and the thing I like is that we have the most accurate and fact checkers, I have never seen us post something that wasn’t easy to verify. im pretty certain that makes some people very very upset.
Wonderful hearing truth from such an individual! This man speaks authoritatively from the perspective of an actual indigenous person. Unlike the former European colonizers whose vision and objectivity are utterly blinded by their centuries of oppression of native peoples, he is able to see that the Jewish people are the true indigenous residents of Israel. He sees the depth of Jewish ties to the land and the fungibility of the Arabs as they migrated throughout the region seeking a livelihood, oblivious to political borders and with no identity other than Arab/Muslim.
from the perspective of ANOTHER indigenous person, its gonna be tough but you have to remember that the Jewish people are in fact indigenous to the land of Israel, language matters and we have to start being more careful.
I appreciate the kind words, its important to speak truth
Binyamin Arazi – Are they “stubbornly” refusing to give up the land or are they being held against their will and better judgement?
http://daledamos.blogspot.com/2010/10/on-issue-of-palestinian-emigration-west.html
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2010/10/over-million-palestinian-arabs-want-to.html#.Vf7ST99Viko
One should also factor in the harsh treatment “Palestinians” receive at the hands of their “brothers”
http://www.minorityrights.org/4945/jordan/palestinians.html
http://www.gulfwar1991.com/Gulf%20War%20Complete/Chapter%2010,%20Palestinians%20in%20Kuwait,%20Terror%20and%20Ethnic%20Cleansing,%20By%20Hassan%20A%20El-Najjar.htm
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/01/starving-death-syria-yarmouk-camp-201412974852695717.html
http://rsq.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/2-3/531.short
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/07/palestinian-refugees-entrepreneurs-lebanon-2014728125748415788.html
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6314/ethnic-cleansing-palestinians
E benAbuya – what do you believe is the best thing for the average Palestinian there to do?
I have said, repeatedly, that Arab behavior is best understood as an addiction pathology [http://www.israellycool.com/2014/07/15/reader-post-understanding-pfalestinian-behavior-as-addiction/]
The Arabs manifest all of the denial/projection/blaming and violent acting-out behaviors characteristic of addictions of every type. [http://www.peggyferguson.com/userfiles/10846/file/NewPDFSw_CartButtons/AddictionWorksheets/Defense%20Mechanism%20In%20Alcoholism.pdf]
They are pre-disposed to this pathology because it is re-enforced by the Honor/Shame dynamic at the core of their culture [http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2005/08/shame-arab-psyche-and-islam.html] and [http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/p/eozs-psychological-history-of.html#.Vhxa-npViko]
Unlike evil or stupidity (for which there is no cure), an addict can embark on the long and difficult path of Recovery. This, necessarily must begin with the recognition, by the addict, that the addiction (not the drug) is “making their lives unliveable”.
No one can do that for them. The best an external actor can manage is to convince the Enabler/Co-Dependents (who abet the addict remaining in denial, by shielding them from the consequences of their actions); to desist. This is very difficult because the Enabler/Co-Dependent has a parallel addiction to the psychic rewards they reap from believing they are “doing good” and “battling evil”. An external actor can also provide indirect support to addicts who enter recovery. But, only indirect support. Only other addicts, in recovery from the same addiction, have the “standing/ability” to provide direct support.
So, what do I believe is the best thing for the “average Arab there to do”? Make an honest self-assessment. Am I an addict (The Jews Ate My Homework.) Am I an Enabler/Co-Dependent (The Jews Ate His/Her/Their Homework.) If either are the case; then for them to take their future into their own hands; and change the choices they make. To learn to recognize when the desire to blame the “other” for the choices they make is whar prevents them from making sound choices (choices that do not perpetuate their dysfunction.)
Am I confident that I will see such a change in Arab behavior anytime soon? No I am not. I do see flickers of the dawning of that day. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m6ux-IeNo4] [http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/author/Bassam+Tawil] [http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/charlie-hebdo-the-time-of-the-assassins-114115#.VMAuzfnF_YE] and in other places both exalted and at the grassroots. So I have faith that it will come. Even the longest journey begins with a first step.
Since I never studied anthropology in college, I wonder if this exposition of the territorial imperative is part of the curriculum. If not, it must be to validate the scholarship therein.
they won’t, the issue is that “scholars” like said, offered up a comfortable narrative for the leftists in academia, everything pale skinned is evil and bad everything darskinned is good. if they started actually looking at things in context things would have to be reexamined and many sacred cows would have to be slaughtered
No one is born an uber virtuous being according to skin color or background. Anyone who thinks otherwise is buying into an incredibly harmful and destructive fiction. All humans are shaped by their cultures, societies, and families. It’s time for the mask to drop and the skin game to take its rightful place on the ash heap of history as the useless and harmful myth it is.
Need to double the wars we fought since our independence.
1956
1967
1973
1982
I wasn’t writing a history, lol but Thank you.
1967 and 1973 were the two wars that Israel faced an existential danger from. So, his statement is accurate.
This American Indian is a big supporter of Israel and I really enjoy Ryan’s articles on the Indigenous status of Jewish people in Israel. I’ve encountered anit-Zionists whose heads about explode when they realize that an American Indian is defending and supporting Israel. I will continue to support Israel and Ryan- you are awesome.
Israelis and Jews around the world- you have friends among Native America.
Rob – thank you for speaking up.
Can you explain how it is that your Native American heritage leads you to identify with Zionism?
[on the Indigenous status of Jewish people in Israel]
Native America? Venezuela? Brazil? Bolivia? Nicaragua? They all hate ‘Israel’. Are you that desperate?
100%, 1,000% 1,000,000% impossible for Ashkenazi Jews to be indigenous. It is shaming to you to discard your own identify and clutch onto someone else’s.
Look in the mirror an repeat after me. Take a deep breath.
1. I am looking in the mirror and I see a European Jew very distinct and apart from Arab Jews.
2. Pride comes from accepting oneself as is and not to imitate or wannabe.
3. God, please help me to accept myself asis, to love myself asis and respect myself.
4. Amen