The Red Nation
The Navajo Nation’s partnership with Zionist organizations raises historical questions.
Black men fighting for their freedom once drenched the earth with the blood of white men. We know this history. At the same time, our grandfathers carried guns against the colonizers who used a “civil war” over the question of African slavery as a justification to “tame” the Western frontier.
Indian killers like Kit Carson waged scorched earth campaigns against Diné and Apache people, covering the earth with Indigenous blood and tears. The end result was the Navajo Long Walk, known as Hwéeldi. One-third of Navajos died of forced starvation and disease when they arrived at the concentration camp, Bosque Redondo.
The remaining Diné people returned to their Diné Bikeyah, but faced more than a century of destructive resource colonialism — oil, coal, uranium, fracking — within their four sacred mountains. It was Manifest Destiny, the belief that the United States is ordained by God to expand westward, first practiced on North American Indigenous people, that the United States exported to the world. Israel has taken up this genocidal ideology in the form of Zionism and has practiced elimination against Palestinians. That’s what unites these two settler states: Indian killing.
Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez rides with the modern day Kit Carson when he partners with Israel, tarnishing the memory of his own ancestors who survived genocide, against Native Palestinians merely fighting for the right to live. Like Carson, Israel is waging a ruthless campaign of imprisoning, torturing, and killing Palestinians, especially children, to take their land and suffocate their future.
US President Trump’s “Deal of the Century” is little more than an attempt to create concentration camps for Palestinians, much like the US Indian reservations. This modern day Indian War is a crime against humanity and must be stopped.
We share our aspirations for freedom against colonizers like the United States and Israel with our Palestinian relatives. We unequivocally support their right to call for boycotts, divestments, and sanctions against their colonizer. We condemn the hostile and violent attitude toward Palestinians by the Navajo Nation President Nez who only embarrasses himself by partnering with colonial Zionists, while the vast majority of humanity condemns Israeli crimes against humanity and stands with Palestine.
The Diné song, Shi Naasha, is a song of return and liberation. Diné ancestors sang it when they returned to their homelands, and we sing it today on the frontlines battling modern day settler colonialism. We sing it for Palestinian relatives who are marching to return to their homelands. Israeli snipers shoot their knee caps. So they crawl to freedom on their elbows. And we sing and fight for the Indigenous right of return, the right to stay, and for the liberation of Palestine and Turtle Island.
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