Why American Indian Studies Should Be Important to Palestine Solidarity

The fifth chapter argues that American Indian and Indigenous Studies should be more central to Palestine solidarity based on the presence of Palestine as an issue of global concern. In particular, the author examines recent debates about academic freedom, faculty governance, donor influence, and the suppression of radical points of view in the context of the colonial logic by which universities are animated.

Boycotting Israel as Native Nationalism

The second chapter offers a broad history of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, or BDS, movement and theorizes ways that it can be used in the service of Native nationalism. It explores the implications of academic boycott in the context of broader questions about decolonization, emphasizing the geographies of Indigeneity in America. While issues of academic freedom and activist strategy are central to BDS, it is important to keep sight of the movement’s engagement with the landscapes from which it arises. What does it mean for a BDS movement, one originating in Palestine, to do work in America, itself a colonized space? In what ways can and should BDS interact with Native communities? How do Native communities inform the tactics and philosophies of BDS? The chapter argues that BDS actually functions as an articulation of Native sovereignty, inside and beyond America, but only when it transcends its own nationalist paradigms.

How Palestine Became Important to American Indian Studies

The first chapter explores how Palestine became a topic of interest to the field of American Indian Studies and provides an overview of how the interchange between Natives and Palestinians functioned in the past and how it operates in the present. In particular, the analysis of Palestine in American Indian studies forces us to continue exploring the cultures and geographies of Indigeneity.

Inter/National Aesthetics

The fourth chapter examines a range of Native poets to see how they invoke Palestine as a theme and symbol. Here, the author treats Palestine as an aesthetic in Native poetry, not simply a site of political, as to highlight thematic connections across a relatively wide range of work rather than identify a sort of sociopolitical phenomena. In this way, the consistent device of openendedness and ambiguity and self-reflection is that, in the hands of Native poets, Palestine always becomes Indian country.

Ethnic Cleansing as National Uplift

The third chapter compares the colonial narratives of Andrew Jackson and Ze’ev Jabotinsky to illustrate how foundational discourses of settlement traverse time and geography. Both played central roles in horrible acts of ethnic cleansing, Jackson in the Trail of Tears and Jabotinsky in the 1948 nakba (catastrophe), when more than seven hundred thousand Palestinian Arabs were expelled from their homes. They reify the logic of settler colonization and theorize the necessity of violence in the development of a sustainable modernity. In this way, they helped design a strategy that would be used by numerous imperialists in the following decades.

Conclusion

The conclusion of Inter/Nationalism discusses a suite of board games that reproduces settler colonization. Using two games released by the German company Catan, where the gamer conquers and settles an already occupied land, the author suggests that it reinforces a sense of belonging on a native land without the fuss of guilt or self-reflection. Real histories can be subsumed by their own legendary effects on modernity, but their disappearance into the settler’s overactive imagination is never complete.