Where did transnational indigenous solidarity come from? Indigeneity as both structure of and resistance to settler colonialism, in the case of Turtle Island and Palestine


Katie Boudreau Morris, Carleton University

Why do some people engage in transnational, indigenous solidarity? Experiences of settler-colonialism vary widely between contexts and over time. Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island can be conceptualized as a group – as ‘indigenous’ and especially as ‘Aboriginal’ – only because of settler colonialism (See, for e.g., Alfred and Corntassel 2005: 598; Wolfe 2012: 134-135). So how do those engaged in anti-colonial solidarity and activism draw lateral connections between peoples belonging to vastly different geographic, ethnic, and ontological existences? The creation of the concept of indigeneity is a major feat of colonial power, considering the enormous diversity the term elides and discursively erases. Indeed, having suffered under colonialism may be the only common defining characteristic of indigenous peoples. Settler colonial realities are inextricably linked with the creation of indigeneity, in that it is shaped by power relationships that are both affected by and often produced as a response to societal frameworks such as capitalism and colonialism (Coulthard 2014: 7). Considering that indigeneity is a construction of colonialism and fraudulently suppresses an immense diversity of peoples, why draw any connections between diverse indigenous contexts, processes and peoples? Examining the common elements of systems of power, while always striving for a greater understanding of differences, allows for essential critical analyses of those systems. For example, critical genocide studies employ their framework with the understanding that genocides have occurred through different processes in different times and places, but that connecting the “structural elements” (Martínez Salazar 2014: 15) provides a basis for understanding and working against such processes. The same might be said for analyses of gender regimes or systems of apartheid. Using these critical frameworks pushes back against the “active work of epistemic, political, and economic elites that recognize and exercise the power of naming, including, excluding, and denying” (Martínez Salazar 2014: 15). The framework of settler colonialism, as an analytical tool and type of colonialism/coloniality framework, allows for greater and more accurate understandings of global historical and contemporary processes of power relations, “reconcil[ing] a range of historical practices that might otherwise seem distinct” (Wolfe 2012: 134). Thus, there are a number of common threads to be drawn between various realities of colonial oppression. These common threads are worth examining so as to contribute to counter-narratives. Alfred and Corntassel write, There are approximately 350 million Indigenous peoples situated in some 70 countries around the world. All of these people confront the daily realities of having their lands, cultures and governmental authorities simultaneously attacked, denied and reconstructed by colonial societies and states. This has been the case for generations (2005: 599). In the case of Palestine, Abdo writes that “The loss of land for indigenous Palestinians meant the loss of their lives as they had experienced them; it was and is the loss of their very history and existential being” (Abdo 2018: 58). In discussing the economic resources used to establish settlement, Wolfe writes that “there was nothing in particular to Zionism about settler colonialism’s metropolitan funding” (2012: 136). He also identifies several examples of other oppressive actions common in the creation and maintenance of a settler colony: “homicide, spatial expulsion and/or confinement, various forms of assimilation, and a repressive discourse” that he names “repressive authenticity” (134). This list is not exhaustive. Lugones (2010), for example, also names process of defining and relegating “women” as a gender class as another commonality. Wolfe contends with the notion that links cannot or should not be drawn between contexts with different specificities, arguing that “the idea that particular histories should share nothing in common would… be absurd – how else could we talk of such widely distributed commonplaces as capitalism, patriarchy, or homophobia? …national histories are unique but unexceptional.” (135) He argues furthermore that “our task,” by which I presume he means the task of those engaging in scholarly work, is to analyze and record the diverse and specific historical and contemporary contexts of settler colonialism in its various manifestations (135). And so, in regard to my big questions above, I wondered: are any the broad common threads of settler-colonialism observable in the specificities of relevant discourses? To that end, I analyse two sample sets of messages posted on Twitter; one set of tweets which I gathered with the hashtag #BDS which had been posted in September 2014 relating to solidarity with Palestine, and one publicly archived set of tweets that were posted in July 2013 with the hashtag #IdleNoMore relating to solidarity with indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. Significantly, between a quarter and a half of the sampled tweets contained direct or indirect references to land. 10% and 2.3% of the sets, respectively, contained the word “genocide,” while 17% and 19% contained references to solidarity at a local and/or international level. In this paper, I take a closer look at these narratives and how they might reflect a sense of lateral connection and transnational indigenous solidarity.

This paper will be presented at the following session: