0:03

good afternoon everyone and welcome to land life and liberation part three

0:08

palestine my name is sally frater and i am the curator of the decolonize this

0:14

place exhibition when we breathe we breathe together which is currently on at the art gallery of guelph i’m going

0:20

to begin our time together today with atlanta acknowledgement today guelph is home to many first

0:27

nations metis and inui people from across turtle island as we gather together we would like to

0:34

acknowledge that the art gallery of guelph resides on the ancestral lands of the attawanderen people

0:39

and more recently these treaty lands and territory of the mississaugas of a credit

0:45

we recognize the significance of the dish with one spoon covenant to this land and offer our respect to our anishinabe

0:53

hodonoshane and metis neighbors as we strive to strengthen our relationships with them

0:59

we express our gratitude for sharing these lambs for a mutual benefit

1:05

although we are convening virtually and might individually be located in different places it is useful for us all to remember that

1:12

wherever we are in what we currently refer to as the americas we are on indigenous land and that we should

1:19

move forward in a spirit of mindfulness and reciprocity i would also like to

1:25

take a minute to acknowledge the horrific murders of the spa workers in atlanta

1:31

georgia in the u.s and to say that our hearts go out to the friends and families of the victims and the victims

1:37

themselves asian americans advancing justice is offering free bystander intervention

1:44

training online and stop aapi asian american

1:49

pacific islander hate and fight coveted racism in canada are organizations that you can reach out to

1:57

for resources before we begin some housekeeping notes since we are in a zoom webinar

2:03

everyone’s microphones are turned off you are welcome this is for all of the viewing participants to submit questions

2:10

throughout the conversation using the chat function and we will share them with all of the panelists following the close

2:16

of the conversation i’d also like to say a quick thank you to dr shauna mccabe and jenna brownlow for their technical

2:23

support for this series land life and liberation is a series of

2:29

five conversations that have been unfolding as an accompaniment to the

2:35

this decolonized exhibition when we breathe we breathe together which is currently on at the art gallery

2:40

of guelph until april 25th the exhibition and conservation and conversations

2:46

center the colonial operations manual which can be downloaded on the website of decolonize this place

2:53

and the art gallery of wealth as a starting point for reflection and action the d colonial operations

3:00

manual embodies the principle of movement generated media and is a document offered as a tool of

3:07

study reflection and action the manual is grounded in five years of collective thinking

3:12

art making and organizing undertaken by decolonize this place with dozens of groups in new york city

3:22

and beyond with numerous references to movement work preceding the establishment of

3:27

decolonize this place in 2016. the scale material quantity and

3:33

distribution form of the manual underscores the importance of freely shared printed matter in the work of movement building

3:41

the conversations will explore a number of threads related to the confluence of land sovereignty

3:46

liberation and resistance today’s conversation will feature decolonizes place members

3:54

and they will be joined by jandy desai erica violet lee mark ayash

4:01

and corey balsam so i’m going to read everyone’s bios and then i’ll turn the conversation

4:08

over to you all chandi desai is an is assistant

4:14

professor at the university of toronto and a palestinian solidarity activist who hosts the liberation pedagogy

4:21

podcast she has written articles on palestinian resistance and revolutionary culture and

4:28

comparative settler colony course sorry colonial economies

4:33

and resurgence solidarities erica violet lee is a neo

4:42

writer scholar and community organizer from west side saskatoon she tweets at erica violet lee

4:51

mark ayash is associate professor of sociology at mount royal university and the author

4:57

of hermeneutics of violence he teaches and writes in areas of social

5:03

political and postcolonial theory particularly focusing on the palestinian-israeli

5:08

struggle corey balsam is the national coordinator of

5:13

independent jewish voices canada and is among the lead organizers of

5:19

ijv’s no ihra campaign launched in 2019

5:25

he has spent several years living and working in occupied palestine i’m very much looking forward to today’s

5:32

conversation as i have to all of the conversations and i’m going to turn it over to um to avian to

5:39

make some opening remarks do you want to go

5:45

international yeah i just uh i’m natasha dylan i’m a part of decolonize this

5:51

place um i’m an artist a filmmaker organizer um and you know we so apart from mark

5:59

chandni corey and uh erica the other people that you see on the screen we’re all members of the colonize this place

6:05

and we always from between you know uh writers to art historians to you know american studies scholars uh

6:12

organizers artists human beings uh you know just people who are like kind of family and kind of working

6:19

together uh we call ourselves an affinity group uh more than thinking of ourselves as like

6:24

in an organization or a coalition um you know our work is mostly more relational based than trying to

6:30

think of activism or organizing in kind of a professional sense um and you

6:36

know we started decolonizing this place along six trends a struggle which was you know indigenous sovereignty black liberation

6:42

free palestine because the three of them kind of offer a triangulation which can up and empire you know many people have

6:48

written about it uh but also like you know um like today you know if especially in the west and in you

6:55

know northern america you have movements around decolonization and abolition and within that then palestine becomes

7:00

really important because of the kind of anti-imperialist perspectives and struggle that it brings in so that also um you know for

7:07

organizing within our social movements it does not become a kind of american-centric or canadian-centric uh conversation

7:14

and then uh the other three strands of struggle that we had was degentrification uh global wage workers and dismantling

7:20

patriarchy because we should always be doing that um i’ll just say something very little personal around palestine

7:27

and then i mean maybe you can take over i mean to me you know i started working um around palestinian solidarity when i

7:34

met amin in 2010 uh you know we met at icp and we started doing mostly like you know

7:39

uh film projects and media projects which very much then got rooted into social movement

7:44

organizing and like movement looking at it from a more kind of movement-generated art movement generated uh theory and

7:50

kind of movement generated kind of like organizing from the grassroots level and for me i think for me palestine

7:55

offered the lens of understanding settler colonization because my own context i come from punjab um you know in india so i have a much

8:02

more like british colonialism kind of understanding of it but once you know i went to palestine for me was like oh wait 1948 or 47 oh

8:09

i understand how they divided up the maps and like how they made up these borders and and then you know applying that also to

8:16

uh both united states and canada and understanding secular colonization so for me personally palestine was the

8:21

kind of lens which allowed me to also understand the kind of indigenous and black liberation struggle in the united states as as a as

8:28

somebody who’s been you know there for ten years as a as somebody as an immigrant um and then lastly i would say for me

8:35

then also bringing it back home it has also been really important uh looking at you know what’s happening with kashmir here but also most recently

8:43

around the work around the not the workers around the farmers who are uh resisting you know on the borders in delhi around land

8:50

right and how land at this point is a central struggle um everywhere and has been and you know

8:56

and and you can talk about many places um and so that i think i’ve learned i have a lot to

9:02

a lot of love to give uh to palestine and the palestinian struggle for like making me see that and and for me to

9:09

also understand um how land and then palestine both are such important things to talk about

9:14

especially in the west but also in india right when there’s like so much islamophobia and also the kind of development of israel into

9:21

this like you know um weapons manufacturer kind of leader in in in surveillance technologies

9:27

and and the kind of like uh you know landscape that is because i’m also a media studies uh kind of a person so anyways that’s

9:34

just some you know personal points on why i think palestine’s important for us no matter where we are

9:39

and then one last thing you know um just being prior says this often like why palestine right because palestine’s

9:45

everywhere it’s coming for us everywhere and we can see that in terms of both technologies you know that are that are you know like

9:52

control technologies of control but also in our organizing spaces um yeah i mean

9:57

do you want to take forward thank you um i think that you said it all i’ll just say a little bit about

10:03

where i’m from so i’m palestinian from alberta but i’ve been living in you know occupied lands

10:10

lenape lands for the past 10 years and for me i’ve had to contend with as a

10:17

palestinian whose land is occupied to be on occupied land and what that means

10:23

in terms of responsibilities and obligations and also in terms of analysis as a way to move

10:29

in the world and live so that’s kind of you know my background but i want to shout out all the members of the

10:35

collective here you see their names and i’m going to pass it on to eric you know and and each of you will kind

10:42

of share where you are and what you’re doing and what matters to you and then we’ll just have that conversation

10:50

thank you um yeah my name is erica violet lee i am on neo and metis

10:57

and nishinobeg territory right now in saskatoon saskatchewan

11:02

canada middle of canada or so-called canada and uh i am a writer and community

11:09

organizer based in i guess my work is based on urban indigenous resurgence and life

11:18

and lately a lot of my focus on writing has been on black and indigenous

11:24

solidarities but obviously always in in my mind

11:29

as well as international indigenous solidarity and doing my work with idle no more and

11:35

in my work with indigenous climate action um i realized how

11:43

universal a lot of our struggles are and natasha brought this up with land as a central struggle um so whether

11:51

it’s like in an urban indigenous context in the land that’s currently referred to as canada

11:56

or in palestine or um i think often of the dispossession

12:03

that is specific to black folks and black life um land is so so central to us

12:11

and in an indigenous world view any indigenous world view um and i think just as

12:19

someone who is a being on this earth that land is so crucial and important

12:26

so today i’m going to be drawing from a couple of texts that are really important to me over the last little

12:32

while um thinking about black life blm and the struggle for uh freedom post blm

12:40

and the struggle for freedom by ronaldo walcott and adil abdullahi um and recently

12:48

ronaldo walcott also released on property which is another book that’s really informed my understanding

12:54

of land and property and nationalism and border and rural by

12:59

harshawalia that just came out as well so yeah that’s where i’m coming from

13:05

and maybe i should pass it on to someone or do you have someone else in mind

13:14

hi so uh thank you so much to all the organizers for uh you know organizing us to be here and

13:22

i’m so thrilled to be in conversation with all these uh wonderful people and um yeah so i just wanna also

13:30

um point that i’m on hudanoshone here on windat and the lands of the mississaugas of the

13:37

new credit um here in tokaranto and um i want to just begin by the question of

13:43

why palestine for me and then maybe uh kind of think through land life and liberation

13:48

uh in a brief sort of way but why palestine for me is that i i grew up in southern africa

13:55

uh during the heyday of the anti-apartheid movement and at the age of seven for me palestine uh was something that

14:02

was deeply in my consciousness and actually the plo had strong the palestinian liberation organization had

14:08

strong relation to african strong relations to the african liberation movements because of the

14:13

the way the trainings worked and the way third world internationalism works so for somebody like me growing up in that

14:19

part of the world palestine we couldn’t think about liberation in southern africa without the liberation

14:24

of the palestinian people and so that is central to um

14:30

how i come to be but i’m also you know by way of india in which um india had a particular

14:36

relationship to palestine which is deeply shifted over the years in a really aggressive kind of way

14:43

but india played a central role in also advocating for the palestinian struggle in a

14:49

central way so the the global geographies that inform my consciousness are deeply uh

14:55

from an anti-colonial anti-imperialist perspective and that has shaped why i come to palestine now um

15:01

i’ve been doing work in the palestinian solidarity movement for a long time i also go to palestine frequently so i mean

15:07

maybe next time we’re in el vide um near the you know fa noon center having coffee

15:12

um but i uh um i want to talk a little bit about what’s

15:18

been on my mind in the past year because there’s been so much happening around the geographies and the context

15:24

that you’re also thinking about and um so i’m going to speak to both the intellectual and political organizing

15:29

i’ve been doing um but what last january that came to the forefront

15:36

was the degear annexation plan from inside you know where netanyahu was

15:42

talking about this and though de facto annexation has been happening in palestine um netanyahu’s plans were coupled with

15:49

the trump you know deal of the century so-called middle east peace plan and while that was happening and we were

15:55

organizing around no to the annexation that de jure annexation not the annexation that has already been going

16:01

on for decades um simultaneously uh we had the mass uprisings take place in uh in

16:09

in in this in the state you know so-called canada around the west within resistance um

16:15

and um defiance and refusal against the construction of the coastal gasoline

16:20

pipeline um which was met with you know brutal militarized forms of

16:26

uh police violence um as indigenous people were trying to defend their lands and so for me i thought all of this came

16:32

together the jury annexation the trump plan and fascism um what was going on with

16:37

white supremacy around you know um jewish white supremacy against jewish people in the u.s

16:43

which coincided with these mass uprisings in canada and um that enabled some of us that have

16:48

been doing indigenous solidarity work for a really long time in this context specifically from the context of the

16:54

palestinian struggle to renew some of those relations and ties um i i was part of a lot of solidarity

17:00

efforts here um to stand on the front lines on the rail blockades uh participating in those blockades uh

17:07

you know raising money for material support for the blockades or for the land defense um

17:12

um uh legal funds right because people were incarcerated uh because

17:18

of their them putting bodies on their on the front lines uh also participating in various rallies

17:23

and then also doing lots of educationals uh for movement folks to politically really understand also the

17:29

wetsuit and context the pipelines and what that means and and so that work was both with palestine solidarity

17:35

organizations and organizing uh and activists but it was also with my students at the university of toronto

17:40

where i teach because many of my students are also indigenous and palestinian and black and from many racialized communities in

17:47

which we were also trying to make ties to the community in ways that really reflect it so

17:53

an example was during that period uh one of the land offenders at whitswitten that was

17:58

imprisoned um who was a former student for my program we brought her and spent a lot of time thinking through

18:04

what that means and at that same time the bnc had released the boycott national committee in palestine had

18:09

released a statement which we shared with them in which we send to you know people like sylvia

18:14

mcadam that are part of you know that were found founders of idol no more to sort of also both symbolically show

18:22

the way solidarity was coming from palestine but also how we were organizing here and

18:27

we were giving updates to folks in palestine through the bnc coordinator around the work that we were doing here

18:34

um to also because canada gets removed or the work that’s happening in this geography gets removed out of palestine solidarity

18:41

conversations the u.s essentially the focus and and we’ve been doing a lot of work to build with so many communities here

18:47

that that was really really important and so what that you know another sort of moment of uh indigenous

18:54

uh building was during 2018 when myself linda tawar me ella

18:59

um and audrey huntley um from no more silence in toronto

19:04

organized an indigenous feminist delegation that traveled from six nations to palestine and they got to see the

19:11

serious impacts of um land you know we sort of organized as feminist land defenders that were

19:17

looking at land defense in both geographies and not just looking at the violence of settler colonialism but also looking at

19:23

how we imagine new possibilities um and and new ways of de-linking from you know the settler

19:28

state because those models have been used by indigenous communities here and of course during the first cynthia father those models were central in palestine

19:35

so we had a lot of deep conversations about that kind of work and so when we were doing this organizing a lot

19:41

of students a lot of activists a lot of solidarity folks were asking like johnny what’s the history

19:47

you know of indigenous palestine solidarity here and there is a long history that is over 50 years old but

19:52

nobody really knows it and so i’ve decided to write an article that will be coming out uh for in the journal for palestine

19:59

studies and their 50th anniversary special issue in in three weeks on this deep history but also not just the

20:07

internationalist history of of of the way we’ve built solidarity but the way this struggle has also evolved

20:13

so the way you start with you know the american um the american indian movement the palestinian liberation organization

20:18

and red power activists here that make connections to then you know the connections that activists make

20:24

to apartheid and and using apartheid as that analogy and then moving into the contemporary around climate justice

20:30

pipelines um and other kinds of connections so that has been central and part of it

20:36

part of what i’ve been thinking about along a long line along the lines of that is not just

20:42

that yes these struggles have analogies and there’s so many parallels but also they’re very different and i think that i needed to do a

20:49

theoretical intervention in terms of how actually these these settler geographies are not the

20:55

same because they have different histories of state formation they have different histories of imperialist uh relations and capitalist

21:01

relations so i needed to sort of do that but also situate that within a global history

21:06

because we have to think about slavery we have to think about labor migration and dentureship and of course

21:12

this theft of indigenous lands through genocidal practices so that being said um that

21:18

i think also motivated me motivated me to really think about why is it that we need to think about

21:25

solidarity because oftentimes what happens is in these in these you know solidarity moments

21:31

there’s a lot of symbolic solidarity that happens but sometimes the tensions of how to build becomes a huge issue

21:37

right so because different people might be asking for different things and sometimes their contradiction sometimes

21:44

there’s actually a lack of understanding or sometimes there’s academic language that actually then gets taken in by activists but

21:51

activists don’t know um what that really means historically and then that becomes a really big uh troubling

21:58

way of how we actually build so the settler binary indigenous settler binary is a huge issue

22:04

and erica i really love the fact that you put up that book those three books but also the the last one

22:09

border rule because i think migration has been completely erased out of how settler colonialism here has

22:14

thought about specifically forced migration so part of this intervention that i’m trying to make is so we can really think

22:20

about world making together in terms of thinking about black liberation palestinian liberation indigenous sovereignty

22:26

abolition um and and and and migrant justice and labor struggles and working-class struggles and feminist

22:32

struggles in a way that is comprehensive that nobody gets excluded out of thinking about liberation because

22:38

when we think about getting free sometimes in this moment nationalism takes over and a nationalism then precludes

22:44

how other people that aren’t that don’t belong to this territory or aren’t national to this territory

22:50

get evicted so that’s that and then the last thing i just want to say is that um you know the liberation

22:57

pedagogy podcast is a space where i’ve been having these conversations all year with folks around black black liberation

23:04

indigenous liberation um palestinian liberation other other perspectives and it really also

23:10

brings me to um natasha’s sort of intervention or um thinking around farmers in india and

23:18

kashmir and these really important struggles globally where i have often thought about

23:23

internationalism as a framework for um solidarity and oftentimes solidarity i know in the context that

23:30

i’m in becomes about identity politics and i always say this that while identity can be useful in certain

23:36

ways to kind of you know make sense of how white supremacy or capitalism or

23:41

imperialism you know operates or divides people what it doesn’t help us do is actually see

23:47

how structures and systems are connected so internationalism for me both historically in the present is so important because

23:53

when we look at what is going on with you know the rise of the far right whether it’s in brazil

23:58

with bolsonaro whether it’s netanyahu whether it’s modi in india whether it’s you know all of these regimes are

24:04

connected and they’re sharing technologies of violence they’re sharing military equipment they’re sharing technologies

24:10

and all of these are being tried and tested on palestinians at the end of the day and and it’s an infrastructure that lots of money is

24:16

being made out of so i just want to say that all of this is important i think to both solidarity to land defense but most

24:22

of all to liberation and um yeah and so my my my life

24:27

has been very very committed to these issues including uh most recently the fight against the

24:33

ihra which i’m sure we’re going to get into in a bit thank you mark

24:38

if you’re if you’re good to go sure thank you very much um

24:45

i’m i’m speaking to you today from the uh homelands of the mitsutapi the uh nakota and the

24:52

satina nations and uh metis nation as well region number three in alberta um

25:00

like uh amin i was also born in palestine i was born and raised in siluan

25:05

in jerusalem um i lived there for the first 14 years of my life under israeli

25:11

occupation before immigrating to what is now called canada um and like amin the most difficult aspect

25:19

of my move to this place has always been how do i now understand my positionality

25:27

as as part of the settlers and not part of the indigenous uh peoples um and i finally had the guts

25:33

to now write this out so hopefully it will appear in a co-edited uh book as an introductory to it um at some

25:40

point um in the near future uh but but that is certainly one of the most difficult

25:46

aspects of of coming here and um and and certainly in in

25:51

in creating relationships and meeting people with with indigenous peoples in canada that

25:56

has helped me deal with those uh people like erica uh people uh people that i’ve met cowboy smith uh

26:03

x in in in calgary uh the the the formidable madonna thunderhawk

26:08

um and people like that have have had a really profound uh uh impact on me in my ways

26:16

ways of thinking and and how i’ve come to uh to deal with that difficulty and continue to deal with that

26:23

difficulty um and and uh thank you as well i forgot

26:28

thank you for uh inviting me thank you amin uh sally uh uh natasha andrew and decolonize this

26:35

place for for organizing this this is wonderful um i i i i was able to listen to one of

26:40

your previous events and it was great and one of the strange things about attending all these uh zoom meetings is

26:46

um i forgot that i was a participant in this one until you’ve got a call um

26:52

uh so um maybe i’ll i’ll uh i won’t mention too

26:57

much about uh um you know specifics of my work but but let me

27:02

just kind of maybe just give you a piece of that substantive piece and i’m more a much more of a theorist

27:09

than anything else um and and uh it’s it’s wonderful for me to follow uh

27:14

chandni’s uh terrific uh presentations and comments because it saves me the trouble from from describing the the negative effects

27:21

of over overlooking the differences across these struggles and how that can can conceal indigenous voices and and

27:28

the specificities that that we find in in all of these different struggles um and in my humble view i think that

27:35

when we talk about solidarity i often find people think that we need to come up with a huge list

27:42

of things we have in common that we agree on i don’t think that that’s the case i actually think it could be just one or

27:48

two things and they could be really abstract uh there’s nothing wrong with that commonalities and solidarities across

27:55

history and all sorts of social movements uh have never needed you know a 200 academic book to tell

28:02

them what their commonalities are in fact that’s the antithesis of what makes a movement works

28:08

uh work um though that work can be of course useful in activism so uh in in my in my uh sort of uh

28:16

just entry level uh conversation sort of starting uh effort

28:22

here let me pose i think two things uh that we can we can focus on as points of solidarity

28:29

as points of commonality across these differences um and and let me start with the with

28:36

the structures that are uh oppressing us in these struggles um this in specific you know i’ll take

28:44

i’ll take the sort of uh um uh i’ll i’ll keep the focus a little bit more on indigenous struggles

28:50

um from palestine to standing rock as the poster says at to idle no more if i may add as well

28:59

the structural violence that oppresses indigenous peoples from palestine to standing rock to idle

29:05

no more is called settler colonialism and this thing that is called settler colonialism

29:12

isn’t some natural concept some some uh natural object that exists out

29:18

there in the world that has a definition that is everlasting and non-changing there isn’t a an original case of it

29:25

that that everything else has to fit into in order for it to be called settler colonialism

29:30

that’s not what it is it is a structure of violence that is ever changing within all sorts of within you know even

29:37

if we take just canadian settler colonialism how it operates today is not the way it operated 200 years ago so

29:43

it is a constantly changing structure of violence and it changes within contexts and

29:49

across them as well but one of the features that it does share across history

29:55

and across these geographical spaces i think is the fact that it rests on the dehumanization

30:02

elimination and dispossession of indigenous peoples um and and let me

30:08

focus on that element of dehumanization to start with um it is often the case

30:17

that in that that indigenous experiences indigenous philosophies indigenous

30:23

perspectives in dif indigenous paradigms that are that have been built up and used and and

30:31

and developed by indigenous peoples to explain that structural violence all of that is

30:38

often bracketed bracketed within a within a region that that is

30:44

devalued and silenced within the settler colony within imperial centers

30:50

um it is often painted as emotional reactions as based on feelings just to

30:57

give you kind of a couple of recent or sorry simple manifestations of that kind of discourse

31:03

um it even can appear in in especially liberal discourses it can

31:09

appear as as a valid uh accounting of of experiences of violence that we

31:15

ought to uh you know oppose and and not support but it almost never is allowed to enter

31:23

the level of a paradigm as that which explains the structural reasons for an

31:28

experience of violence and and and that’s it that that’s that’s actually a feature

31:33

that runs across colonialism amazing discussed this you know uh 80 years ago now i think or

31:39

70 years ago um so so that’s that part of of of

31:45

dismissing of of of silencing of of marginalizing indigenous paradigms

31:53

and philosophies for explaining the structural violence that we call settler colonialism that is a critical

31:58

element of the dehumanization of indigenous people and it doesn’t just happen

32:04

in the extreme discourses of a trump or netanyahu it happens in the liberal in the

32:11

centrist and in ndp uh if we’re staying in canada in ndp spaces in the in the so-called

32:17

democratic progressive left um uh so so we need to really uh um

32:24

you know to me that’s always a point that i have always founded a point of solidarity i can relate

32:30

with madonna with eric madonna thunderhawk with erica violetly almost immediately on that level

32:35

we we can we can almost you know we can almost uh without saying a word already see how

32:41

we’ve both experienced that and continue to experience that um so so i’ll i’ll just say that for for

32:48

for the the level on in in terms of describing the sort of that commonality on this

32:53

the level of what it is that it is oppressing us and and and eliminating us and and marginalizing us

33:00

in terms of resistance i do think there’s also we can we can start to point to one similar ground upon which we can build

33:08

while still recognizing those differences and supporting each other in those differences and that is the simple quote

33:15

of land as life to take from the title here land life liberation

33:20

um for indigenous struggles land attains a significance and a meaning

33:28

that is far more deep and superior to uh uh the the the notion of land as

33:36

an object to be owned and uh uh sold and demarcated and bounded and

33:42

and all of those sorts of things that the capitalist modern nation state has has has brought into our world the

33:48

euro-american modern nation state um and and encountering that you you

33:53

find a much more meaningful relationship to the land and and to life um that that understands

34:01

the depth of that connection in a variety of ways where you can’t you can no longer separate them um

34:09

so so if i may just tie this into something more specific to show you what i’m after i again

34:17

talking to indigenous activists i always uh uh and and and black activists like ronaldo

34:23

two excellent books uh erica um the the it’s it’s the

34:30

you know we all share a kind of disdain a little bit for that discourse of

34:35

neo-liberal human rights that that again i don’t want to spend time here criticizing the idiots

34:41

uh let’s let’s focus on on the more on the more powerful um um structures that that keep us down

34:49

um and and and so you know that discourse of human rights that oh

34:54

yes i want to help the palestinian people you know get an education get a good job get good health care

35:02

that’s that’s a limited that’s a highly limited approach that that human rights neoliberal human

35:09

rights approach speaks nothing to to what palestinian liberation actually is to what

35:15

indigenous liberation actually is and it’s deep connection to the land there’s there’s an insistence on the

35:20

belonging in our existence on these lands that that you know our existence and the lands are not separate

35:26

you can’t separate them that’s the liberation that we’re after not some uh uh neoliberal human rights

35:34

uh discourse that in the end does nothing to address those structural problems uh those structural uh violences that

35:41

that continuously oppress us and if i may just end on this i i never

35:47

discount the power of inspiration in these struggles and in these solidarities um you know everybody engaged in these

35:54

kinds of struggles knows that despair is the number one thing that you have to fight against uh

36:00

because we’re up against it the odds are against us in all of these struggles um and and

36:06

sometimes that despair is hard to to handle and you don’t tell me you don’t think of giving

36:11

up even if you just do that to yourself of course most of us never say that out loud i wouldn’t

36:17

well i’m doing it right now i suppose but but but there is that there is that

36:24

a sense of inspiration whenever one of the struggles is having a down moment

36:29

and and the palestinian one is having a very low moment right now possibly the lowest in its history

36:35

um it’s inspirational to look at black plasma matter and say okay it’s possible

36:42

even if it’s i know that they’re all saying it didn’t work what happened last summer and i know and i agree but

36:48

there’s still inspiration to draw from that there’s still inspiration to draw from from idol no more and vice versa i hear it all the time as

36:54

well it’s like people telling me oh we draw inspiration from you you’re so brave and i’m like really

37:00

what have we what has worked for us but um but it’s it’s you know that kind of

37:06

inspiration and and um you know that that mutual support is i think really critical point as well

37:11

so i’ll end it there thank you thank you so much mark um corey

37:18

well uh thanks uh thanks for everything that’s been said and thanks um to the organizers of this

37:25

event um i feel to some extent out of my league uh intellectually it’s been a while since

37:31

i’ve been part of such a an intellectual conversation i i did actually did at my master’s with

37:37

with chutney and and renault wildcat was one of my profs and you know so but it’s been a little while

37:42

uh since i’ve been part of of such conversations but but you know again uh thanks for the invite

37:48

and happy to participate um so i’m in montreal jojaga

37:55

and it’s a ghanagahaga territory here on the island of montreal

38:01

i’m a settler of course um i uh my family came

38:07

to stomach centers refugees escaping pogroms in eastern europe and one of my grandparents is a survivor

38:15

of the of the nazi holocaust and was basically the only survivor in his family um

38:22

but nonetheless uh you know a settler uh regardless and of course as i mean

38:27

said you know that comes with with certain responsibilities uh so i feel you know primarily i have many

38:33

responsibilities but i have uh dual responsibilities not dual loyalties i’m not loyal to

38:39

any state really uh dual responsibilities both to turtle island and settler here and uh to

38:46

palestine given um you know the unavoidable connection um that i have as a jewish person

38:54

uh you know especially given the way in which um the institutional jewish community is is

39:00

mobilized around israel and is weaponizing anti-semitism um you know so so that’s

39:06

really where my involvement uh comes in terms of of being involved uh as a jewish person in palestine uh and

39:14

thinking about it uh you know in judaism terms there’s a there’s a concept called tikkun

39:20

which is sort of healing the world which sounds a little cheesy in a way but you know we we sort of interpret it uh and and read into that

39:28

you know decolonization and in solidarity and doing this work uh of you know this

39:34

crucial work um for example in palestine solidarity um which leads me you know today is

39:42

actually the beginning tonight is the beginning of passover um so you know what a perfect i don’t know if this was in any way intentional

39:48

i don’t think so but you know it’s a these are perfect themes for passover right

39:54

uh life land deliberation um and you know in some ways it’s a really interesting

40:01

conversa actually in many ways it’s a it’s an interesting holiday to talk about colonization and decolonization uh and

40:08

and um oppression and and resistance right um

40:15

you know i mean just life uh first of all i mean we could probably sum up the whole story in those three words life

40:21

um you know past god passed over the houses of the the jewish uh

40:27

houses uh when when um killing the firstborn egyptians right

40:32

that was the last plague uh liberation from slavery and then land um taking over the

40:39

promised land right essentially colonizing palestine um you know upon god’s wishes um

40:46

so so it can be seen as a very colonial story um but then there’s also and it depends

40:52

what you what you focus on you know and and uh lefty jews like us focus more on the liberatory side of

40:59

course um and you know there’s a lot of work these days

41:04

uh you know engaging with passover in a way that is that is quite decolonial that stresses

41:10

very much the the uh you know liberatory aspects uh we have a sort of book that we read

41:17

and now there are like hundreds of these things or thousands maybe uh and of course in my family for a long

41:22

time we have a major focus on on palestine solidarity and uh really

41:27

sort of based on this idea of no one is free until everyone is free

41:32

um and you know we we we sometimes talk about the sort of colonial aspect of it and engage with it

41:39

in that way um but of course it’s not stressed as much um

41:44

i also wanted to share that you know i was i was living in palestine for a few years and um you know i made a

41:51

point with my friends to to to celebrate jewish holidays in part just because you know that’s what i normally did and

41:57

also just to sort of show that it’s possible and and you know many palestinians thought it was great because these things were

42:03

always you were never shared with them right they were always kept out and kept out by force um and you know

42:09

one thing that just hit me i think the first passover that i spent there was you know that uh as with most

42:17

jewish holidays in israel uh the occupied territories and palestinian communities are sort of on lockdown

42:24

um and of course you know so you have all these israeli families that are celebrating their liberation

42:31

you know and talking about their liberation story and in order to do that they have to essentially lock up the indigenous

42:37

population right that’s quite striking and says a lot

42:42

about about the hypocrisy and and the ironies of the situation there

42:48

um but of course you know don’t call it apartheid um or or you’re anti-semitic um and you know

42:54

this is of course the crux the problem with the ihra definition and how it’s been weaponized

42:59

to shut down um you know protest and and and criticism israel

43:05

um and um yeah i mean just really briefly uh i think part of why i was

43:13

invited for this conversation was because uh igb has been running independent jewish voices which is

43:18

the organization i work for has been running a campaign um since 2019 to challenge

43:25

the ira definition uh the international holocaust remembrance alliance definition of anti-semitism which essentially uh

43:32

follows in the path of um those who have argued that there’s something called a new anti-semitism

43:38

which is essentially anti-zionism and you know those who object to israel as a

43:45

state that privileges jews over uh the indigenous population essentially

43:51

and you know what we’ve seen is that being weaponized around the world in many ways um often targeting people

43:58

of color uh often targeting palestinians and muslims there are

44:03

you know there’s something called canary mission which is you know which profiles mainly people of color

44:09

who are working on palestine that’s not exactly the ihra definition but it’s within the same

44:14

sort of tradition right um and so you know we’re trying to essentially dismantle that

44:20

uh while also trying to dismantle anti-semitism uh and and point out where the real problems

44:26

are um and you know i think one one thing we’re seeing in the way in

44:32

which this is being sold um is really a sort of prioritization of act of fighting

44:39

anti-semitism over other forms of oppression um and racism

44:44

um and i mean it’s it’s really you know i wish we got as much space in

44:51

opposite media as as some of the institutional jewish community organizations have

44:56

but you know they’re often quoting or citing statistics that show that jews are like the most

45:02

targeted of of everyone um you know something like 20 of hate

45:08

crimes rep police reported hate crimes are targeting jews but of course um those are only the ones that are

45:15

police reported something like i think it’s like two percent target first nations

45:20

people in canada which is like completely backwards and you’re right i mean um

45:27

i think i don’t want to get too deep into this but the issue there is that you know there are there’s research that

45:34

shows that those who are more comfortable uh with police uh and the structures that be are much more

45:40

likely to report things like hate crimes um right so it’s not it’s not necessarily that the jews

45:46

are most targeted even though of course there have been you know there have been uh targets uh you know violence against jews

45:53

uh but i think we we need to put this all in perspective uh and make sure that that we’re fighting

45:58

all forms of racism and oppression intersectionally um and not you know prior prioritizing this struggle uh over others i’ll leave

46:05

it at that thank you thank you corey uh andrew

46:12

wants to say something and then back to you erica and we’ll just keep another round of that

46:18

yeah i just wanted to make a comment that i think speaks to something that uh that everyone said in a way chandi

46:25

you mentioned a deputation that went to palestine

46:31

from i think no more silence indigenous feminists and that was a solidarity uh journey

46:40

i’ve also read about um journeys from first nation leaders who who are being solicited

46:48

uh let’s say by by israeli authorities as part of a hasbro type mission and

46:56

uh to express quite the opposite which is solidarity with uh with the zionists self-perception of

47:03

indigeneity because let’s not forget that uh many zionist jews and this was really

47:08

central to early 20th century colonization consider themselves indigenous and

47:14

they’re reclaiming an indigenous relationship to the land that’s rooted in antiquity and that’s one that’s one of

47:22

the i guess the specific factors that differentiates

47:27

settler colonialism in in historical palestine from other places most colonists don’t

47:35

you know they don’t assert a relationship of indigeneity to the land uh except through you know some

47:42

sort of super christian uh lens of of you know being promised the land in

47:50

in in the rhetoric of the promised land that they drove a lot of settlement in the americas for sure but

47:56

uh uh but this is a very real conviction on the part of a

48:01

lot of zionist jews so that complicates the matter i think when when when we’re talking about

48:08

indigeneity um uh internationally and across settler colonialisms

48:14

and i’m just very interested to hear uh your perspective uh from from where

48:22

you are you know across this border uh because i think it’s a little different for those

48:27

of us living in the us and you know canada is this extraordinary uh history

48:35

uh which in many ways is um the roots of apartheid in many ways i

48:42

think are in are in canadian history you know the indian act of 1867 and the past system

48:49

and so on and so forth you know all of this history i think for a lot of folks joining

48:54

today we might not but uh these are these are in many ways the instruments of apartheid and

49:00

canada has a very particular role to play there in that history so it’s just some general comments that

49:06

i think link link what i heard you all saying

49:13

uh erica yeah thank you for that thanks everyone

49:18

um i think that to that point it’s sort of um

49:24

important to remember or like acknowledge i was just on a panel yesterday on black and indigenous solidarity

49:32

relating to some really awful anti-blackness and anti-black incidents that have

49:37

happened at the university of windsor that we know happens all across

49:44

so-called canada and one of the things we talked about which i think is equally as relevant here is that

49:53

indigenous people non-black indigenous people in the context of canada are

50:01

not permitted but like encouraged to engage in this reconciliatory

50:08

discourse where we’re propped up by the canadian state but only if we

50:15

are willing to um act in a certain way that is respectable that is based in asking for state

50:22

recognition and i’ve had lots of experience with this and seeing

50:28

um like first nations leaders as they would refer to themselves

50:34

um just completely selling out other indigenous people across the world and i think this is a product

50:42

of reconciliation and the way that we are taught to that the only possible way to claim

50:48

humanity which in itself is a concept that was not created for us

50:54

the only way we’re able to claim any sort of humanity is if we appeal to our relationship to our

51:00

colonizer um and to settlers and that is

51:06

so we’re so limited by that discussion um to to never consider ourselves in

51:12

relation to or prioritize our relationalities with palestinians with other indigenous

51:18

people or with black people across the world there is one

51:24

sort of uh quote i wanted to share from black life

51:30

here that i think about this quote basically every day and i think it sums up just so much of

51:37

how the canadian state is a genocidal project

51:45

is something that ultimately needs to be abolished in order for freedom to exist and i think that

51:53

this will link in a lot too is there’s real-palestine discussion so they say we are bored with

52:01

canada which is a great opening line we are bored with the ongoing attempts to make

52:06

canada right we are bored with scholarly and intellectual exercises meant to bring nuance to the violences that institute

52:13

canada as a formation we are bored with the crime that canada is and represents

52:19

but yet we keep returning to a particular scene of the crime the crime is the founding of the nation-state we now call canada

52:28

the scene in question is that of how black people and blackness is revealed and simultaneously erased in the unfolding

52:35

violent drama called contemporary canada and in relation to this on in property

52:42

are in on property by ronaldo walcott um there’s the discussion about how

52:49

and relating to border enroll by harsha walia and there’s the discussion of how

52:57

my cat just hit the computer of how the nation state itself is a

53:05

is a way and always has been a way to

53:10

to create property out of land and to make land something sellable something

53:16

ownable and so ultimately this is what i see and

53:21

what sort of relating to what mark was talking about what i see as a key point of solidarity

53:27

between indigenous movements in so-called canada and palestine

53:36

um thank you i i wanna just kind of in relation to what’s been said so far just say something a connection between

53:44

the the definition of what i’m hearing uh the anti-semitism that people are

53:50

adopting and in fact equating it uh thinking around zionism i think that in

53:57

in the in the occupation of palestine or the colonization of palestine and i bring these things up more as

54:03

technologies ways of doing that we see them operating even on a city level on a police level on a

54:09

counter-insurgency level it’s not that it’s just state practices in that way

54:14

but the thing about the understanding the palestinian understanding and i’m

54:19

saying this as just a palestinian what i the strength of it was when it looked at what was

54:25

happening to the land as a zionist movement not one related to

54:31

religion though there’s a history of that and how that got kind of worked up into a reason to go right and

54:39

a reason to you know all the kind of powers but thinking about zionism and land since

54:46

the 20s and 30s it was critical to think of it actually as a class-based thing as a

54:52

proper like the introduction of property there was a whole discussion amongst palestinian society that assange

54:59

had written about many people have written about the complexity of what palestinian liberation was

55:05

wasn’t contingent on a palestinian state that was something that tried to deal

55:10

with a moment that was actually imposed from above now with the 67

55:15

and then you know the occupations that happened and the two-state solution and the one-state solution and the all

55:21

this nonsense we’re at a moment right now in which going after

55:26

the using the term zionism which opens up a lot of possibility as an entry

55:31

point back to the land and thinking about land versus thinking about nation state amongst people

55:37

is where the palestinians are right now now the technology of the palestinian

55:43

authority or hamas or these kind of things they’re very similar to like leaders

55:49

that get set up by colonizers that don’t represent anyone but themselves and their children and their

55:55

money and we see this happening time and time again with the not-for-profit industrial

56:01

complex here with leaders of tribes with certain centers that represent speaking on

56:07

behalf of entire people though the colonial condition doesn’t allow for it to happen so i want

56:13

to also kind of like think about the monolith of identity or even the construction of

56:19

these identities as ways to get at something that honestly like we want to get free

56:27

that’s not synonymous with nation states and i think that we’re there on that and i think it’s important even and i bring

56:34

it up for two reasons part of why we’re having this conversation or why we tried to do it

56:39

around this time is because of land day land day was in 1976 that was the first

56:45

time but that was the first time a day was announced by which palestinian people

56:51

all came together and said the land right um in ways that they haven’t since the

56:56

occupation uh in 67. so i i bring that up kind of into

57:02

the conversation of thinking when we think about palestine and palestinians and what does it mean to get free

57:08

that there still is this idea of like you know anti-blackness that we need to think about

57:14

you know uh the because we mimic the colonizer in our thinking as well right so and

57:20

then thinking about what does it mean for us to get free but us to have different class positions

57:26

in relation to that as we struggle um sorry that is actually a perfect

57:33

segue to sort of how i wanted to enter into the question that andrew asked because i think what people forget is

57:40

there’s no essentialized indigenous people right whether it’s internal island or whether that’s palestine

57:46

in that people might have an identity a national identity as in palestinian but that i think that when

57:54

we also think about class and i think class gets removed out of this that when you introduce the class

58:00

relation it actually situates palestinian palestinians differently so mahmoud abbas is not what represents the

58:08

palestinian workers or the palestinian peasants or the palestinian refugees right or the palestinians in the diaspora so i

58:14

think that that leads me to actually talking about um the uh the question around the

58:21

leadership right of um uh that andrew raised around those that went uh or or yeah the the afn

58:30

that was invited to go um to israel by israeli leaders and so what had happened

58:36

this was i think sometime into in the 2000s somewhere like maybe 10 years ago where essentially what had happened is i

58:43

think this question around how does how do colonial power start to

58:49

or settlers in other contexts start to now articulate an indigenous relationship to

58:54

indigenous people here right specifically zionists and i think

58:59

part of it is there is you know this idea of playing playing some kind of indigenous native

59:04

that happens in in in terms of the consciousness of settlers but more importantly part of it

59:10

is they’ve also looked at the success of the bds movement right the boycott divestments and sanctions movement

59:15

they’ve seen the way the bds movement has been growing these relationships with indigenous struggles with black

59:21

struggles with other anti-racist movements and struggles and so part of it is it’s almost

59:27

a strategy where when the colonized re and have their relations resurge

59:34

right so these relationships that palestinians have to indigenous people here or in the in in the context of the us or

59:40

elsewhere they’re not new or to black movements or to asian movements or whatnot those are not new but because of

59:47

the way capitalism has structured it especially neoliberal politics solidarity also you know especially when

59:54

oslo was signed things happen and so because of that what that has allowed

1:00:00

for is that there’s an amnesia around the relations that the palestinians have had to so many

1:00:06

other movements and so what a when bds came to the you know like to the scene

1:00:11

and all of these relations were re you know built um a lot of sort of the zionist lobby

1:00:18

wanted to use and rupture that by saying you know what we have to actually mess up these relationships and when we look at the wet suit and

1:00:24

struggle today a lot of this discourse is re used right around oh but there’s division if you hear in the canadian

1:00:30

media they’ll say but no they they did you know some the the hereditary chiefs have one

1:00:36

line and then the other people have another line and and there’s this divisive politics around the fact that

1:00:41

well a lot of indigenous people want the pipelines which is not true actually it is the people that are being

1:00:46

paid by industry people that are profiting from the you know destruction of indigenous territories and land and life

1:00:53

and so this reminds me then of the pa right in the same way in which the pa the palestinian authority can

1:01:00

also become um you know participants in settler colonialism so

1:01:05

they can be collaborators with the israeli state to maintain their capital interest and the pa has

1:01:11

its own police force that is now policing its own indigenous people this is also the case in south africa right black people police black people

1:01:17

today so i think that when we introduce class into our analytic we actually in capitalism we start to

1:01:23

see the question of indigeneity in a way that really ruptures an essentialized way and i think that one of the terms

1:01:30

that kehlani kunai that works in hawaii an indigenous scholar and activist

1:01:36

she really says to indigenous folks you know from across the hemisphere that we cannot participate in red

1:01:42

washing because that’s exactly what this is this is red washing when we participate you know

1:01:48

in projects that further zionism when we participate in projects that are about the oppression

1:01:54

of the palestinian people um through especially you know these like co-indigenous

1:02:00

related things or like sharing histories on particular moments

1:02:05

um in which the oppressed and the oppressor become confused or the colonizer and the colonizer become

1:02:11

confused so i find that really really helpful in terms of you know um indigenous folks also having

1:02:18

that critique and i think erica you raised this really interesting point right that a lot of times because of the way

1:02:24

reconciliation has taken place and people are forced to like engage in a particular dynamic this

1:02:30

relations to these relations to other people might not be in the imaginary as at the forefront and i think you know

1:02:37

when i first learned about the ga suenta like when i learned about um the 201 one of the things which is a

1:02:43

treaty right one of the things i remember asking indigenous elders was so if it was with the settlers the two

1:02:50

rose was with the settlers and the indigenous folks so those of us that arrive into this colony

1:02:56

that are not on the road what happens and how can we build in treaty relations with indigenous

1:03:02

people if we’re not on that row and can there be a different way that we mess with that you know or

1:03:08

create a new a new additional line or something and so it was a kind of imaginative question

1:03:13

and maybe people thought it was silly but it was actually quite political because it was this idea that treaties

1:03:19

were signed right between between um uh folks and and i know that

1:03:25

our arrival on these territories is possible because indigenous people have signed treaties that allow or you

1:03:30

know welcome newcomers to be on these lands or folks that have been pushed away but that doesn’t absolve the responsibilities

1:03:37

newcomers have to indigenous sovereignty struggles or um to indigenous political uh orders as

1:03:43

well i think though the state will use right this to divide and conquer so a lot of times also newcomers will be

1:03:50

like but they are supporting the pipeline so what do we do and so again trying to mess with the disrupt like

1:03:56

disrupt these like narratives i think is really important i think the other piece one of the things that

1:04:01

i also trace in this article that i was talking about is the relationship between reconciliation and peace deals

1:04:07

so in the canadian context you have reconciliation truth and reconciliation and in and in palestine you have oslo

1:04:14

and then this trump and why they come to the forefront is actually indigenous militancy mass

1:04:20

uprisings and a disruption of capitalism so when we actually take capitalism as a central

1:04:26

focus it shifts how we understand everything right in identity nationalism uh resistance and solidarity

1:04:33

and and co-building and finally i just want to say two points because it’s landy one is the land without a people for

1:04:40

people without a land was used by the zionist project to particularly take land and make

1:04:45

people believe it was empty in the way paranellius here in north america is used to pretend indigenous people didn’t appear and the

1:04:52

other piece i just wanted to say because i mean you you brought up ghassan kanafani who was my favorite writer

1:04:58

um is is is in 1976 mahmoud talfixian and samael qasim the poets of

1:05:04

palestine the national poets of palestine were part of landay and were part of you know they’re in the communist party

1:05:10

and taofixi had read this poem and i pulled it up really quickly because i wanted to erica read a piece and i thought it’s

1:05:16

important to also uh bring it to that they he read this online day in lidda in ramlay in the galilee we shall remain

1:05:25

like a wall upon your chest and in your throat like a shard of glass a cactus thorn

1:05:31

and in your eyes a sandstorm we shall remain a wall upon your chest

1:05:38

clean dishes in your restaurant serve drinks in your bars sweep the floors of your kitchens to

1:05:44

snatch a bite for our children from your blue fangs here we shall stay sing our songs take to the

1:05:52

angry streets fill the prisons with dignity in libda in ramlay in the galilee we

1:05:57

shall remain guard the shade of the fig and the olive trees ferment rebellion in our children as

1:06:05

yeast in the dough in lidda in ramlay in the galilee we shall remain

1:06:13

thank you that’s beautiful mark all right

1:06:18

um thank you uh that that was beautiful um and and i and i agree with with the

1:06:23

points raised by both uh erica and chandni so so i won’t repeat any of that but

1:06:28

um uh andrew it’s a good question and it raises uh

1:06:33

important questions around indigeneity which is a complex issue here but i do take issue with the historiography underpinning your

1:06:39

question which i don’t think actually captures the uh the accurate is not the accurate description of of the situation um

1:06:46

zionism of course whenever you’re talking about settler colonists you know if if you’re if you’re thinking

1:06:53

of doing like a a poll to ask them why did you come here that’s not the point really of of

1:06:58

studying and critiquing uh settler colonialism it’s not it’s not the individual or family or even small

1:07:04

community motivations that drove people to go somewhere it’s the political project in which

1:07:10

their movement and actions become meaningful and the direction that that that action is taken into that’s

1:07:16

the significant point of analysis so the political project of settler colonialism must always

1:07:21

remain at the forefront of our analysis when we’re talking about these things not necessarily the intentions of specific individuals or

1:07:28

their actions or or families even um or small communities and and the political project of zionism

1:07:35

pre uh pre-48 and and not for a period even after 48

1:07:41

was unabashedly and unapologetically framing itself in settler colonial terms

1:07:47

not as an indigenous people’s returning some of that discourse was there of course anytime you’re talking about a political project

1:07:53

as complex as zionism you’re going to find different strands all over the place doing arguing all sorts of different

1:07:59

things but the main thrust the the dominant force of that political project

1:08:04

was to set themselves up as akin to european colonizers in the

1:08:11

united states in south africa they sent in canada in australia they sent people to those places to go

1:08:17

study how they were uh uh dispossessing uh indigenous peoples and and and doing the same uh enacting the

1:08:25

same rules and laws uh in palestine um they they they they would talk to uh european leaders

1:08:32

especially in the early parts of the 20th century as the vanguard of civilization in the

1:08:38

land of the orient that was the dominant discourse it wasn’t uh um um oh this is our indigenous land

1:08:45

and we need to come back it was only after uh um decolonization

1:08:51

uh only after across uh africa and the middle east and other places around the world in

1:08:56

asia um after colonialism and settler colonialism became a bad

1:09:01

word it’s only then then you that you start to see zionism shift gears and draw on

1:09:07

different registers to justify uh the dispossession and the colonization settler colonization of

1:09:14

palestine um and and one of those is precisely the one that you pointed out which is that

1:09:19

claimed indigeneity which again is found in other settler colonies i know you you mentioned it briefly there but

1:09:26

uh it’s not it’s not a side a point of other settler colonies uh the

1:09:31

idea that we’re really the indigenous people we’re really the ones that are going to

1:09:36

that this land belongs to and it happened not just on religious terms virginia writes about this to critique

1:09:43

this point that zionism is somehow unique from other settler colonialism only because it was the only one that claimed

1:09:49

uh indigeneity at some point in its history that’s it’s it’s not true others have as well and again that gets me to that point of

1:09:55

comparison when we’re talking about comparison it’s not it’s not one you know original

1:10:02

model of cellular colonialism that if you don’t meet all those criteria you don’t belong in that paradigm it doesn’t

1:10:07

work that way right so so there are differences of course and zionism does have differences in how it uh mobilize that register of indigeneity

1:10:15

especially and continues to do so now which is becoming stronger and so and i suspect will become even stronger

1:10:20

in their discourse um but but we need to we need to be attentive when we’re looking at that as

1:10:25

well at the historical archive what are those arguments to indigeneity that zionism makes

1:10:31

not palestinian jews who have been there for as long as any other palestinian um um the specifically

1:10:39

zionist historiography how you know what are their claims based on um um

1:10:45

you know it’s it’s quite shaky grounds uh that their arguments are based on and in its grounds that erases

1:10:52

uh um any other non-jewish life on that land which has existed for centuries of

1:10:58

course um and and conversely it’s it’s it’s it’s true that um uh indigeneity as

1:11:06

a sort of a a modern version of that term and and politics has come become more

1:11:13

central especially on the grassroots level you’re not going to find it really in the pa or or anything like that but you’ll

1:11:18

you’re going to find it on the grassroots level much more it’s true that that has appeared as a kind of uh the post oslo

1:11:25

in response to the post-oslo uh uh failures and and and and defeats uh that was oslo

1:11:32

um but but palestinians have had uh different articulations of their

1:11:38

indigenous connection and belonging on the land to the land of land as life dating back to the early parts of the

1:11:44

20th century one of my articles does argue that palestinian fellain resistance in the early parts of the 20th century

1:11:50

is actually the perfect illustration of land as life resistance um um

1:11:55

and and in it you actually find much more commonalities between the land of as life of of those early palestinians

1:12:02

than uh with with with with indigenous people than you’ll ever find in the in the palestinian authority or or or

1:12:10

parts of the plo and the plo we have to remember is a mixed story you know it there and like zionism

1:12:17

of course it has different factions there was the dominant part of it that eventually did become the pa

1:12:23

which is as much let me let me use a different language

1:12:28

uh which is quite harmful to palestinian liberation um and and you’ll find you know some

1:12:36

just like you will find some of the harshest critiques of of uh indigenous polit political

1:12:42

ideologies and groups and organizations that have betrayed indigenous peoples and betrayed indigenous liberation you’ll

1:12:47

find the harshest among indigenous activists and scholars uh not from some they don’t need from anybody from the outside to tell them

1:12:53

about that they know about it um and and similarly with the pa you don’t need to look past palestinians

1:12:59

for that critique on the grassroots level activist level scholarly level um so it’s it’s it’s really

1:13:06

you know and and uh uh uh you know he wrote about israeli settlers

1:13:12

in 1965. um um

1:13:18

if if i’m saying that right i always struggled her name i hope i got that right uh but but she in a in an article from

1:13:24

or an essay from a few years ago she says if anything i learned colonialism from palestine

1:13:30

um to argue against people who say that oh palestine is kind of just jumping on board now to

1:13:36

to to catch a moment that that that is popular um and and again and just as uh

1:13:43

erica mentioned uh anti-black racism within indigenous communities anti-palestinianism within

1:13:49

uh indigenous communities there’s also anti-blackness in palestinian communities there’s also a much needed education and

1:13:56

lack of needed because of a huge lack of understanding of of indigenous issues um uh in palestine and i you know it’s

1:14:04

it’s not a it’s not a good enough excuse to say well i don’t know um you know and

1:14:13

when i first came here i was as surprised as any palestinian today that

1:14:18

still doesn’t know that indigenous people exist because i actually didn’t know i still didn’t i didn’t really know that i would

1:14:23

run into indigenous people when i moved to canada because the story that i’m told over there um

1:14:28

um you know i went to a a school that was established by the french jay zui so

1:14:34

uh i learned much more about european history than i did anything else and the story that i was told there is

1:14:40

that they’re all gone they don’t exist anymore um when i went back to palestine 2017 i

1:14:46

met people who were surprised when i would tell them about indigenous people like really they’re still there but but i will tell you this when they

1:14:51

learned that they were still there and they said oh there’s hope for us if they survived if

1:14:57

they survived that onslaught maybe we can survive it too um um

1:15:02

so that was kind of the reaction from there but but but these are things that we need to address in our in our uh communities um and we do

1:15:12

and that’s that’s that’s the point that i also wanna answer is we already do um just most people aren’t usually privy to

1:15:17

these conversations as well thank you thank you mark just to also kind of throw another thing

1:15:23

before i pass it on to corey i mean i think and and this is again coming from a

1:15:28

movement perspective in terms of the things that we’ve been working on here and also kind of drawing on palestine and

1:15:35

i’m not this is not an intellectual point at all but i think that one of the things in which solidarity is

1:15:41

important as a strategic point is that it allows you to see things in a different temporality

1:15:46

right so crossing over from one space to another on a trajectory a linear trajectory of

1:15:51

settler colonization allows you to understand how technologies and mechanisms are working

1:15:58

simultaneously the crossover what it allows for is like different nodes of power through

1:16:03

relations to emerge that deals with as you just pointed out mark

1:16:08

but i’ll just use it what it does is like it’s an intervention an epistemology

1:16:14

like it’s a it’s a knowledge thing that opens up a space to then allow for other imaginaries to

1:16:20

come in that have been foreclosed by virtue of a certain narrative that’s told

1:16:26

right and i think action can allow these other ways of thinking to emerge especially if we connect so it isn’t

1:16:32

solidarity it’s like i want to help you because you’ll help me it’s not that transactional thing it has to be something that’s based on a

1:16:39

strategic choice and in that strategic choice is a recognition that our liberation is

1:16:45

either collective or non-existent okay how do we actually implement that

1:16:50

right and i think that becomes something the other thing i want to say is like you know look i i’ve i’ve consistently

1:16:58

said this i think that palestinian i know like as a palestinian i know that israel and settler

1:17:03

colonization is the problem but the thing that hurts the most is how

1:17:08

we how we have struggled right now to resist more effectively

1:17:13

right and i i don’t say that with any kid like with a lot of care i think that for me the plo like

1:17:21

what people understand from the outside as the plo’s contribution right also kind of diminishes the

1:17:28

intricacies that have been happening one technology israel has uses consistently

1:17:33

is killing people that are more meaningful in the struggle in the conversation not

1:17:39

in their singularly important but in the conversation right and they have these maps of like who do we get

1:17:45

rid of who do you get rid of so you end up with a person like us and his children right or and you can

1:17:51

go on and on but the other thing that you know arafat started that was terrible right

1:17:57

is the reliance on money to get liberation right and where the money comes from

1:18:04

this is similar to the idea of ngos we have to what do movements for

1:18:09

liberation require and how do we attain them and how can the modes of us

1:18:14

organizing contribute to them versus some kind of quick way of like the

1:18:20

russians are helping me this rich guy who who do we have in uh what’s his name the idiot that

1:18:27

actually made oslo channels happen who’s what’s his name

1:18:34

um i was just gonna bring him up

1:18:47

but just to bring to your point actually is a good point but because i think that the you know i just

1:18:54

thinking of what everybody’s saying i think one of the biggest challenges is the kind of reorientation

1:18:59

um that we need within our own communities around this narrative of like or development and progress right which

1:19:04

is the kind of settlers modernity project or the european modernity project that we see everywhere like from villages to

1:19:11

you know like anywhere in the world right now you go development means a certain thing you need a mall you need a kfc or a mcdonald’s or like you know

1:19:18

these are like on a very basic level right um and so i feel like a lot of like

1:19:23

um the struggle i mean i was thinking about it especially when erica brought up like you know the people who support pipelines right because that’s the

1:19:30

that’s that’s the kind of narrative that has been told to us that we can’t imagine another way of like you know progress or

1:19:37

humanity or you know any of these things and i think um that’s also something really

1:19:42

important and which also then moves away from all of these human rights frameworks that you know we’ve been you know mark brought up as

1:19:49

well like you know um like whose humanity are we asking um to be part of right and i think uh

1:19:55

that reorientation among our communities is so important and i think that most of the times we

1:20:01

struggle because counter insurgency is so strong as as you were mentioning i mean around

1:20:06

anybody who tries to even imagine or enact or or even try to do it in terms of action

1:20:12

anyway not just in palace i mean you’ve seen that in new york i mean i’m in new delhi right now and you can’t even say

1:20:18

like anything about you know what’s going on like i mean what’s happening with the farmers here who are basically

1:20:24

you know saying that we don’t want to live this you know modernistic like development lifestyle we don’t want

1:20:30

corporate agriculture we want our one land you know one acre of land where we live we have our house

1:20:36

we have our cows we eat from there like that’s it we don’t need more and that’s what’s also like this way of

1:20:41

living or relationality to land or or other beings or you know all of that

1:20:46

is also majorly under threat just you know including with our own people um and i think that that that’s the kind

1:20:53

of yeah i just wanted to bring that in and and to add to that i think that just to finish my round up my point

1:20:59

i think that if you look at for example right now you have elections right so you have palestinians participating or

1:21:05

not participating in kinesic elections in israel okay so that’s the one-state solution model then you have the two-state

1:21:11

solution model where you have people that look like you right put their boot on your on your neck and say vote for me

1:21:18

because i’m the only option none of them make sense right but that’s that’s that’s the model but

1:21:25

it came from somewhere see the the choice the arafat had to accept uh was this idea of like to be born into

1:21:32

modernity to be born as a nation state right the coupling of nation and state

1:21:38

must be a prerequisite right nation and state borders this kind of thing has to be a

1:21:44

prerequisite for you to exist and in the process the laws that you needed i know this because i worked on

1:21:51

the laws that the palestinians needed to adopt for for nation state to even be a

1:21:56

possibility around opening markets around what kind of laws are there

1:22:01

around ngos coming in from the outside and labor laws not applying to them

1:22:08

right and them getting paid more than the palestinians there and not learn anything through an

1:22:15

exchange of knowledge sharing even right so that when you

1:22:20

look at like the isolation of palestinians and palestinian thinking that it was even on the ngo level

1:22:27

because where did the ngos come from germany netherlands all these nonsense

1:22:34

places that provide this modernist western modernist like modernity concept in which it

1:22:40

encloses upon itself a conversation of what is possible so then you have palestinians just

1:22:46

running around it’s like well here i’m being civil here i’m behaving because it’s it’s about this respectability thing

1:22:53

and they always bring in youth and gender issues there’s 10 engineers on youtube women as an issue is an issue youth is an issue you

1:23:01

this is an issue right so i think that now i want to say this

1:23:06

by by bringing up one point that was mentioned recently is how low things are and how how deeply

1:23:13

kind of hurt people feel in palestine to say that and we were joking around this the conversation

1:23:19

right now is what constitutes a manifestation or a mobilization or a protest

1:23:24

and the argument that’s being made is three is enough and that one of the people could be a

1:23:30

you know citizen journalist and the other person could be the one that called for the thing and one person

1:23:36

showed up but that is equally important to what’s happening right now just like you know basil you know the

1:23:43

fact that he was he was able to resist and and and chose chose that path is equally important to

1:23:50

these moments so they’re small but they’re really important and they have both in them and i think

1:23:56

that to bring this back to the you know to bring this back to these leaders but also these parties or these

1:24:03

factions they’re alienating their people they’re alienating of most people but they

1:24:09

occupy the space whether it’s the pflp that you know whether it’s you know hamas or whatever the people on

1:24:16

top are a class formation that’s separate than the people that are on the bottom

1:24:22

but yet they speak for them and in the name of like not going against each other because we will die unity is the only

1:24:29

thing that’s keeping us is this discourse that i think has been

1:24:36

it needs to change now how does outside solidarity relate to this this is important like i’m a palestinian

1:24:43

but i’m over here i have a palestinian pastor i don’t have a palestinian passport though my sisters have so then these people that are speaking

1:24:49

about liberation or return or whatever they’re not speaking for me i’ve already been abandoned just like the people in 48 had been

1:24:56

abandoned and i think this the movement the movement here is very different

1:25:01

around bds around student organizing right and and them going after them in

1:25:08

our campuses with this stupid law right and an artist too

1:25:15

and cultural institutions like the gallery sally who’s a curator here took risks in having this conversation

1:25:22

right that shouldn’t be the case because of these kind of relations that we build together

1:25:28

and the kind of knowledges that we end up sharing and i think that’s the point that i think you know

1:25:35

this conversation is really anchored in it’s the theory but it’s also the practice and the possibilities that can emerge in

1:25:42

our campuses in our streets

1:25:48

go ahead corey sorry all good okay yeah so much so many good things have been

1:25:53

said um just to respond i worked for oxfam in palestine so i could have a whole other conversation

1:25:59

about about the you know development non-profit industrial complex

1:26:04

and um especially you know i mean there are differences but uh anyways i i

1:26:11

i echo what what i mean just said i wanted to respond to a number of things um going back to

1:26:16

andrew’s original question around jewish indigeneity and mark’s response i think um so i agree i

1:26:22

mean that the indigeneity aspect was a lot is a lot of how sort of the zionist

1:26:29

national narrative how was constructed uh but was not the main crux of it

1:26:34

um i would say i mean i wouldn’t dismiss intentions however of of those who are

1:26:39

behind all of this um i i think i see what you’re you’re saying mark but um

1:26:45

you know i think this links in many ways to the conversation in in the results of all this mimicry is

1:26:51

as i mean was was talking about you know the zionist movement came about

1:26:57

um as a result of of of thinking about how to resolve the jewish question and there was

1:27:02

in europe and you know the subjugation and oppression of jews in europe and there were many different opinions on that right um

1:27:09

between you know before the holocaust the biggest organization of jews in europe was the bund which had

1:27:15

a very different perspective on uh jewish self-determination which was

1:27:20

anti-zionist and and had you know called for um you know autonomy

1:27:25

for for jewish communities in europe the zionists as as daniel boyaran has

1:27:31

written um you know adopted this sort of colonial mimicry right this was the only way they

1:27:36

were convinced to be accepted as as as as you know in humanity

1:27:41

right this is the way that they they could be accepted by as white essentially right as being you

1:27:47

know as themselves engaging this colonial project that’s linked and and you know

1:27:54

supported by europe right so you know in thinking about what what erica was

1:27:59

saying too about like what like the hoops that you have to jump to through the ways in which you know um oppressed groups or

1:28:06

colonized groups have to um speak the word of words of the colonizer or or

1:28:12

you know behave like like like the like you know white people where the colonizer um so like how do we

1:28:19

you know how do we end this cycle of mimicry right of colonial mimicry of white mimicry

1:28:24

right how do we create different frames and and uh you know break break from that cycle

1:28:32

right um the jewish problem the palestinian problem you know and then of course you know palestinians

1:28:38

having you know the pa and subjugation of other palestinians um and you know i think

1:28:44

when you were talking about the sort of specificity of the of israel as a settler colony um i don’t

1:28:51

know that many i’m interested maybe another time to hear from mark about different examples but one one that popped in my mind

1:28:58

was liberia and and they um you know it’s not an area of expertise but you

1:29:03

know the of mine but you know the whole back to africa movement uh and the way in which you know some uh

1:29:10

ex-slaves in uh black slaves in in the u.s went to liberia

1:29:15

and you know ended up subjugating the local african population uh right and

1:29:22

and of course that was on the pretext of being indigenous uh to africa which is true yeah so

1:29:29

you know i think there are a few of those examples which are interesting um to to explore and um

1:29:36

and yeah i i was also just thinking about you know inserting into the conversation the question around self-determination

1:29:41

and what that means uh that’s something that’s included in one of the examples of um

1:29:47

of the ira definitions to bring it back to that um denying jews the right to

1:29:52

self-determination for example um suggesting that uh israel is a racist

1:29:58

endeavor that the establishment of israel is a racist endeavor right um so this question around

1:30:04

self-determination it’s like okay what is that what does that mean though right um

1:30:10

you know if we have this right to self-determination i mean does that what is that you know that shouldn’t

1:30:15

mean and i don’t think it does mean the right to have a state at the you know an exclusive state or a state that

1:30:22

that you know um gives one rights or privileges over another group

1:30:27

especially in a in a colonial situation um and i think we need to do a lot you know a lot more to unpack

1:30:34

that and and perhaps to you know peter baynard actually had a really good article about about that in jewish

1:30:40

currents recently um but yeah i think that’s that’s a conversation that we need to challenge and also this this idea that you know suggesting that

1:30:47

israel is a racist endeavor is racist as anti-semitic i mean it’s backwards i mean it’s it’s anti-anti-racist therefore is

1:30:54

essentially racist um so you know i think um mark has a lot of thoughts on this too

1:31:01

we’ve discussed this before and um you know i think it speaks also to just this general backlash against

1:31:07

you know this work that we’re that we’re doing whether it’s about palestine uh or um just like wokeness in general

1:31:14

and uh you know free speech you know when it protects the the far right um

1:31:22

anyways i’ll leave it at that for now may i quickly just jump in after is that okay

1:31:27

sure sure so just to clarify cory uh when i was talking about intentions i wasn’t

1:31:33

talking about the goals of zionism in the zionist movement but the intentions of specific individuals specific

1:31:38

families oh i came here because you know the pogroms or or or whatever the just like settlers

1:31:45

would come here i came because of the famine et cetera et cetera so i was just separating those two intentions out um

1:31:51

and in fact though i don’t i’m separating them for the sake of understanding the larger political project but it doesn’t mean that they’re

1:31:58

insignificant for analysis because in some of them you will find the access to and the opposition to that political

1:32:05

project that would use those those peoples those bodies those movements those actions in specific directions sometimes despite

1:32:12

their uh despite their their their intentions um and and so you know ultimately the

1:32:18

jewish question in europe is now intertwined with the palestinian question and in my view

1:32:24

those those can’t be unintertwined uh and neither should they be uh and at

1:32:31

this point uh i mean it’s it’s it’s the there’s there’s nothing fair about about bringing that the horrors of

1:32:39

of of anti-semitic europe’s on the palestinians but that’s what has happened and now palestinians are part

1:32:44

of that story um but but to tie it into your last point that is precisely what the

1:32:50

ihra and other definitions of anti-semitism like the jerusalem declaration

1:32:56

which opposes the ihrae but not nearly strong enough as far as i’m concerned in a very problematic way is in is that

1:33:03

it excludes the palestinian experience from that story now of the jewish

1:33:09

question um whether you like it or not the jewish question of europe

1:33:15

is now a palestinian question as well done and and we can’t be

1:33:22

excluded from any conversation that wants to bring us into its documents whether the ihra

1:33:29

or the jerusalem declaration uh and of course the jerusalem the ihra is is is a is a serious threat

1:33:36

i’ve worked with corey i’m still working with corey we’ll continue to work with corey and independent jewish voices and others

1:33:42

uh to oppose uh its adoption in canadian universities and canadian institutions and that is a a fight that we i hope

1:33:50

many of you will will will will support and and and ask your rep you know respective faculty

1:33:57

associations at guelph if anybody here from guelph is listening uh uh to to oppose the adoption of the

1:34:03

atari which is a way to tell palestinians what it is that

1:34:09

they can and cannot say about their own dispossession their own oppression

1:34:14

and the structural violences that they face and let me just use a very quick quote from edward saeed from from 1979

1:34:21

and and and because the way in which this whole discourse has been established is that

1:34:26

um palestinians who oppose uh that i’m not talking just opposing

1:34:32

netanyahu opposing the foundation of israel

1:34:38

they are they are posed as anti-semitic as doing that because they hate jews um and edward wrote in 1979

1:34:45

palestinian resistance was never launched and i quote because the palestinian natives thought that jews were evil

1:34:51

but because no natives take kindly to having their territory settled by foreigners end quote

1:34:59

i don’t think anything else needs to be said honestly in response to this accusation i i think

1:35:05

these accusations of palestinians being anti-semitic because they are opposed to uh israeli uh

1:35:12

dispossession of palestinians is absolutely ludicrous and outrageous and it’s only in specific

1:35:20

uh um settler colonial context in which we all are all thinking and writing here today and

1:35:25

euro-american settler colonial context that this becomes somehow a valid argument

1:35:31

and we become the radicals for trying to oppose it um um and it’s it reminds me of of

1:35:39

and i’ll end it here because others will have more to say about this but um it reminds me of a talk that i

1:35:45

attended at mru a few years ago um around indigenous struggles and and

1:35:50

an elder um and there was the discussion about how you know views of calling canada settler

1:35:56

colonial state was considered a radical position um and an elder got up and and just said

1:36:03

what’s so radical about the truth i don’t think anything else needs to be

1:36:09

said but that thank you andrew go ahead yeah can i however say

1:36:15

something else uh i mean not directly about what you said mark but about the the ira definition and the and the

1:36:22

jerusalem declaration and i i for those who haven’t read the ig jv uh definition uh

1:36:30

it’s it’s worth looking at it’s much shorter and and israel is relegated to a very

1:36:38

short rejoinder at the very end of it it’s not israel-centric which is uh very much appreciated uh and it’s

1:36:45

probably i think of of the three is the best that i’ve certainly seen so far but there may be

1:36:50

others now other organizations are going to come forward with their own definitions maybe jvp will do that

1:36:58

it’s become a frontline issue and uh and and i want to say something provocative about that

1:37:05

it’s important uh it has consequences it’s a speech right issue uh which

1:37:12

you know for all of us and for our students and our peers is is very important because we’re all

1:37:18

you know we’re all speakers and writers and cultural workers and but it’s also a distraction um

1:37:26

and uh and in in tandem with a lot of law fair zionist law fair it ties us up

1:37:34

in these interminable conversations and a lot of action and energy goes towards combating

1:37:41

this or that this or that placement of language and so on and so forth our students are up in arms about it

1:37:48

rightly so students care about speech rights almost more than anything else

1:37:53

they try and suppress their speech rights they get fired up but look at what’s going on in the

1:37:59

ground more and more land is being expropriated as we speak 12 000 homes

1:38:06

in the settlements were green lighted last year another 800 were green

1:38:11

lighted the day before trump left office if we put it if we put it in that

1:38:18

context that a lot of the arguments and the controversies and the debates that have

1:38:23

been generated by israeli authorities and pro-israeli advocates are intended

1:38:30

to be a distraction and again i want to be clear i’m not discounting the importance

1:38:36

of the of the work that should go in to combating that definition it is important but

1:38:43

let’s not you know lose sight of what’s happening on the ground and to the land even as we speak which

1:38:51

is why you know we’re having this this conversation in the lead-up to land day

1:38:59

thank you andrew i mean i think that you know one of the things that comes to mind and then i want to pass it on to

1:39:04

erica and then uh chandni and and others uh for more one more round because the the

1:39:11

people who are watching are interested and and there there’s no questions we’re fielding them as we go but if anything

1:39:17

comes up we’ll share i agree at 100 that you know often

1:39:24

in order to win we have to have our own strategy and not react that’s like broad principles right and i

1:39:30

think the challenges our movements are facing right now are around world making in a very detailed way again not to take away

1:39:38

at all from these fights because as an educator i know that my students would choose not to

1:39:44

write about palestine um just because it’s not a thing that

1:39:49

gives you a job right and that if it’s not if you’re not the people that are writing about it

1:39:54

after a while you don’t know what to read about it and then the pistol like knowledges get created and and you have

1:40:01

to figure out how to find other knowledges right so then that’s the thing so i think that’s one point the second point

1:40:08

is that in thinking about our movements when we’re talking about solidarity in a

1:40:14

way the challenge for us is how to think of solidarity as like these things which we’ve

1:40:19

articulated in relation how do they relate to this law that is problematic but how does it

1:40:25

relate to the institution that we’re having this conversation at because

1:40:32

one of the things that i think is very important about building uh and imagining is for things to be

1:40:38

both concrete right because it’s a way to move and our relationships are clear

1:40:44

we’re on zoom we can see each other and then we have specificities of our struggle coming together to try to

1:40:50

figure it out a little bit right and have these kind of conversations

1:40:55

so i think about i think about the idea of these identities that are mentioning

1:41:02

because we’re born into them and there are many right and one of them is like palestinian and there’s another one

1:41:07

that’s like indigenous and then there’s a specificity that are related to that and i think about these

1:41:12

things and i think about people are there at least the people we’re working with they’re there but the

1:41:18

issue becomes in terms of the demands or the imagination the political imaginary

1:41:23

how do we exist as settler you know settlers that reject settling with people that are you know

1:41:30

that are migrants forced migration what does it mean to be for land back without any

1:41:37

conditions or qualifications but for to be for black liberation without

1:41:43

any conditions or qualifications that’s the kind of work that we’re

1:41:48

facing on the ground because it’s easy to go out in a protest for black life

1:41:54

you know and never protest for palestine but what are we building analytically

1:41:59

and imaginatively beyond making the case for each or against or or for

1:42:05

each other and i think that this law in a way just as an exercise offers that

1:42:11

possibility right now just in these few minutes that we have remained to riff

1:42:17

why is this law important for all of us here

1:42:22

right just like why does it matter about what what matters about this law what

1:42:28

can the gallery do differently what can we do differently right not to make it the sole

1:42:34

thing about it because at the end of the day i was in germany people are saying we say what we mean because

1:42:39

we’re down for the struggle and the struggle has never been without cost

1:42:45

right but that’s a culture that needs to be developed and i think that this law is trying to stifle the culture that

1:42:53

we have been successful in developing right now so

1:42:58

maybe that’s a prompt for erica and let’s go one one more wave through

1:43:05

yeah thank you for that i think that brought up um a very important point that i sort of

1:43:10

wanted to end on which is um so much of what i’ve learned from studying

1:43:16

black scholars and black community organizers in the past few years i’m still

1:43:23

completely new to all of the theory and don’t claim to know much about it but

1:43:31

it’s been such a guiding force in my life that i want to bring it up and then you brought up the idea of how

1:43:39

our extremes of liberation are literally made impossible and especially in certain spaces um

1:43:46

and i was thinking about ronaldo again corey it’s funny that um he taught you because he was one of my

1:43:51

supervisors um and i remember having this same

1:43:57

discussion um about how in places like the hood or the reserve or reservation or

1:44:05

palestine or border zones are all of our ideas of liberation are

1:44:12

are meant to be impossible like they’re designed to be impossible and so to even be able to dream

1:44:21

beyond the the state um beyond the university beyond museums

1:44:27

or beyond whatever colonial structures we’re facing and are

1:44:35

interfering in our lives um is something truly remarkable

1:44:40

you also said this struggle has never been without cost and i think of that i was reading one of

1:44:46

mark’s pieces that he just recently published and he talks about in interacting with

1:44:56

some folks who came over to palestine when he was younger and sort of the interesting nature of

1:45:03

that interaction and like um wondering why these folks basically

1:45:09

chose to put themselves in the position of being in solidarity with palestine of

1:45:16

of being putting themselves in in harm’s way basically and what resonated with me about that

1:45:23

is that um so often i get asked question as like an indigenous organizer

1:45:30

what drives you forward and like what keeps you going and the reality is that we have no other

1:45:37

choice like it’s not a it’s not something that i do for fun it’s not something that like i think

1:45:45

often what would i be doing with my life if i didn’t have to be

1:45:51

discussing and responding to anti-indigenous racism

1:45:57

every day of my life in the prairies in canada so yeah dreaming is such an important

1:46:05

part of that moving beyond that and i wanted to say thank you to chadney for bringing up

1:46:11

the west fowton struggle because we actually had an inner city blockade here as well

1:46:19

and it was right before the pandemic started and it was such an amazing

1:46:26

experience to just um see the amount of folks who were coming out

1:46:31

and um in my experience as well on having been on certain like

1:46:38

indigenous and palestinian solidarity panels um and seeing what students are facing

1:46:46

in these institutions um like the lack of funding these these

1:46:51

panels are not funded right by the university of course not um

1:46:57

but being in that space and seeing how deep palestinian solidarity goes with

1:47:03

indigenous solidarity on this land and remembering the first time i read

1:47:08

mahmoud darwish and getting to meet mark for the first time all of those things give me give me

1:47:16

um ways to dream so yeah i’ll just leave it there

1:47:22

thank you erica um so actually it’s really interesting

1:47:28

erica that you um bring that that you know you end with

1:47:33

that point because i remember we brought you to u of t as part of having you reflect on your

1:47:41

relationship to darwish as a writer um precisely in in terms of you know

1:47:47

continuing to build relations and so i i think it’s incredible that you bring that up

1:47:53

and part of you bringing that up and it being also at the university campus

1:47:59

brings me to the point on ihra right and the challenges that student organizers faculty

1:48:05

organizers faculty anybody doing any sort of work that is critical of israel right

1:48:11

or israel is a racist endeavor as has been outlined in that in that ihra

1:48:18

document so problematically uh is is facing in in the most uh uh horrific kinds of ways

1:48:25

and i think that when i think about that definition and then

1:48:30

i also look at the jerusalem declaration one of the problems with all of this is that they forgot

1:48:36

about settler colonialism this is the problem because they don’t understand the actual

1:48:43

context and state formation history so yes there’s a lot around the history of

1:48:48

zionism that it’s considered or the history of um well zionism

1:48:55

pulled out of the settler colonial reality or um or a lot around anti-semitism

1:49:03

straight going back to the holocaust right or to not see um violence but what is

1:49:10

completely erased is the subtler colonial reality and this relation of colonizer and colonized and

1:49:15

so what i find so deeply problematic is then the these all of it i mean on the one

1:49:22

hand absolutely like the jerusalem declaration will be strategically used right because of who it’s

1:49:28

crafted by and so i’m not dismissing it i think it’s important that we have that document now but i also think that precisely to

1:49:35

mark’s earlier point is that palestinian once again the palestinian voice and the palestinian

1:49:42

ontology and epistemology yet again is is back to where it’s supposed to belong and so that is

1:49:48

really deeply troubling for me in terms of uh what that means and i can say so much more on the eye cherry

1:49:54

but i don’t want to what i what i do want to say is that the law fair pieces is

1:50:00

and and the iha has created serious challenges for solidarity even amongst progressives

1:50:05

because what is going on that i can i can share just like really truthfully

1:50:10

is that people are really scared people are scared about having to you know have to go to court

1:50:16

because if you’re in solidarity your student group or you’re a grassroots organization you’re learning about palestine in

1:50:22

principle you’re in solidarity you want to do work and then you’re met with this like backlash in the most

1:50:28

horrific waves where you don’t have the language or the political strategy and you’re not necessarily part of the

1:50:34

bds movement you work with organizers right but that’s not your work your work is maybe abolition or police brutality or

1:50:41

indigenous land you know claims or whatever and so what i’m noticing is actually that even

1:50:48

progressives who want to be in solidarity in principle ways who are making the connections at

1:50:53

moments are getting scared of the implications this has for their work and certainly i know the student unions that have you know passed

1:51:00

these motions and have adopted divestment um campaigns they’re also going through that i’m a part of utf i mean it’s a

1:51:07

show like the amount of fighting that is going on so what has also happened with this ihra

1:51:12

is it’s created so much confusion amongst folks for others it’s created a lot of fear

1:51:17

it’s and then lawfare is creating a lot of fear around like oh my god in order for us to say anything

1:51:22

about palestine we need to have lawyers and we need to have a lot of money and resources so what does that mean and i think that

1:51:29

ijb is doing incredible work to back folks up to support folks i think arc right which mark can speak to

1:51:35

later is doing incredible work and knowing that and then faculty of palestine is doing incredible work

1:51:41

um to fight the ihra so these three bodies in the context of i think the canadian context were fighting hard and and are providing

1:51:48

resources and support for people who are under attack right now is is also incredible i know that after i give up gave a lecture on gassan

1:51:55

kennefani um i haven’t made it public but they came down on me really hard um as a way to use an example at uft to

1:52:02

say here’s another example of anti-semitism this is why we need the ihra and it could have meant as a non-tenure track

1:52:09

faculty member to you know potentially have my employment rescinded so the fear

1:52:14

also of like junior faculty stepping up or people worried that this could lead to

1:52:19

them being called anti-semitic um or or losing material like you know things and

1:52:25

because i’m trained very well um this stuff doesn’t you know it’s a

1:52:31

day that you feel pissed and you take off from you know the world but you come back fighting it because you

1:52:37

know there there is no other option as um as uh as has been said by erica and

1:52:43

others that you know we have to survive whether that’s ihra or that’s you know stuff on on the land or um

1:52:51

aggression in whatever form it comes in we have to survive so all the resistance that we do is part of

1:52:57

part of that survival and you can get tired and take breaks but um you you can’t stop because there’s no

1:53:04

choice and i think i want to end with the peace on imagination since we’re

1:53:09

also trying to not be nihilistic and be hopeful is that this idea of a poetics

1:53:14

of relation is something that is from a caribbean writer eduardo gilles that i’ve always found so helpful to

1:53:20

think about relations to other people to land to life to struggles

1:53:26

and i think it’s in the struggle that we can continue to keep each other um excited about the possibilities of

1:53:33

radical imaginings and you know possibilities for freedom because it’s in struggle that we find

1:53:39

answers to everything i find if i did this work academically alone i couldn’t if i did it in an activist silo i

1:53:45

couldn’t but i think when we really struggle when we work together when we organize when we think

1:53:51

intellectually when we you know think of strategies take history all of this in struggle we’re able to arrive um

1:53:58

somewhere so i am really um hopeful about um yes the situations are shitty

1:54:07

but i’m hopeful about the people’s possibilities and what we can do together and with all the collectives

1:54:13

that we know and the global movements that we’re part of um to continue to fight this because we

1:54:18

have been and yeah and that’s that’s i guess all the poetics of relation

1:54:29

thank you um yeah uh first of all i don’t know what i would do without their wish so

1:54:34

uh thank you for bringing him up um so as chandni mentioned i am a member of

1:54:40

the academic alliance against anti-semitism racism colonialism and censorship in canada for short arc

1:54:47

we didn’t do a good job coming up with it a quick name uh but i’ve added the link

1:54:53

to our uh campaign uh uh to the panelists here i’m not sure if it can be shared with the others as well

1:54:59

uh listening in um so you’ll find much more information about that there um and and our goal is simple is to get

1:55:07

faculty associations across the country to uh pass motions that that

1:55:12

that clearly state that they oppose the adoption of the ihra um and as i said before you know uh

1:55:19

only a couple of quotes are needed to oppose its substance there’s not much substance there to begin with um um i’ve written an

1:55:26

op-ed in al jazeera on it addressing the substance a little bit more so let me just talk a little bit

1:55:32

about its structure uh here to end um the ira is is a typical

1:55:38

state-centric document it has no connection to grassroots it has um

1:55:46

a sort of um very little concern for um

1:55:54

the interests of of of varying groups within society like any other state-centric document

1:55:59

and project it is driven to address state-centric elite interests um and and that that’s how the

1:56:07

document was produced it was produced through state structures not through a really like a consultation

1:56:12

i mean consultation after you’ve written it is not consultation also a critique i have of the jerusalem

1:56:18

declaration um um there was no any real consultation with the palestinians

1:56:23

um but uh anyway it is different than the ihrae in these regards in these structures um so

1:56:31

it it it is it’s a top-down you know that’s what we call in sociology top-down process it’s it’s your it’s

1:56:37

your classic uh ideal type of top-down processes um

1:56:42

and and it’s it operates that way so um it is meant to um

1:56:49

you know speak to edi people who are corporate edi people um edi people that

1:56:56

work for the liberal government and advise trudeau and even the ndp establishment

1:57:02

they’re not talking to edi people working with faculty associations edi people who have made a dedicated their entire lives to

1:57:10

developing properly anti-racist praxis properly anti-colonial practices

1:57:16

um that that’s the difference between people who oppose the ihra and people who are proponents of it the people who are

1:57:22

proponents of it are your corporate edi types uh the people who are its opponents

1:57:28

are people like independent jewish voices scholars activists people on the ground that

1:57:33

understand that this is an effort to purely um um

1:57:39

silence and marginalize um all voices whether they come from palestinians or

1:57:46

other people uh who who are seriously critical

1:57:51

of israel and israeli state practices policies structures and so on um and and it serves no other purpose

1:57:58

but that it has nothing to do with the necessary fight against the horror that is anti-semitism and

1:58:05

anti-semitism let me be clear is at the foundation of the euro-american nation-state

1:58:11

um it is not something that is gone or ended after uh the holocaust none of

1:58:17

these euro-american nation states have ever had a real reckoning with their anti-semitism which is rooted

1:58:24

at their foundation and iterate does nothing to oppose that the jerusalem declaration does reach

1:58:30

into that a little bit better which is why i’m not advancing arguments against it in the same way that i would advance against

1:58:35

the ihra but it fails miserably i think and dangerously so

1:58:40

in how it um marginalizes palestinian voices and can be used as a tool by

1:58:49

the people who are proponents of the ihra to do the exact same work that the hra is meant to do

1:58:54

that’s that’s my other huge criticism of the jerusalem declaration people who are proponents of the itra

1:58:59

can use this document as well to silence palestinians it will be the onus will be on palestinians to go to

1:59:06

one set of guidelines to say no no you can’t put me in that guideline you got to put me in that guideline what’s that going to help um um so

1:59:14

um you know it’s it’s highly problematic in that regard and and you see you know the palestinians

1:59:19

appear in the jerusalem declaration in two ways first as emotional and feelings that’s it

1:59:25

right palestinians have emotions and feelings sometimes against israel that we have to take seriously that’s in the preamble

1:59:30

um i’ll i’m i’m skipping past the fancy ways that they’re writing it but that’s what they’re saying um and at the end the last set of

1:59:37

guidelines again i’ll skip past the fantasy stuff and get to it it has a subtitle that says we don’t

1:59:43

necessarily agree with these actions that part does not appear in anything else

1:59:48

so that heading says all these palestinian actions they have the right to do bds but

1:59:53

man is it controversial and keep away from that that’s that’s the

1:59:59

sub message of that whether it was intended or not is irrelevant to me that’s the effects of the discourse in this case yes

2:00:05

intentions are irrelevant i will stick to that the effects of the discourse are going to matter more

2:00:11

but at any rate um uh the artery remains i think the top priority right now to oppose so i i would like to bring the

2:00:17

attention back to that and just say that the idea that the ihra

2:00:23

is an anti-racist project is laughable um and and and please remind people of

2:00:30

that when you hear that argument because that’s one of the counter arguments uh that we hear and and i think corey

2:00:35

will do a pretty good job of talking about some of the other counter arguments better than i can because he’s faced them

2:00:40

all um um it has been arguing against them so i will end it there thank you thank you

2:00:46

mark um sorry you corey and then i’ll wrap

2:00:52

up and hand it over to sally okay great um so first of all i want to say um

2:00:58

yeah um i mean it reminded us of this but props to the guelph art gallery

2:01:03

and and to all of you actually for for daring to to have this conversation um because yeah i mean it can be

2:01:10

dangerous um and people lose their jobs and people don’t get hired and people are are slandered and and all of that

2:01:18

right so like yeah much respect it’s it’s it’s quite easy for me i mean you know

2:01:25

there’s certain risks as a jewish person in terms of my community etc but um but it’s relatively easy with my

2:01:32

sort of you know my white privilege and being jewish to have these conversations um so so respect to everyone that’s

2:01:39

engaging in this uh one thing we’re actually doing um is a research project right now uh

2:01:44

collecting testimonies of those who have been impacted by the ira definition but also

2:01:50

you know by the weaponization of anti-semitism uh in general to to really show you know

2:01:57

how this is having an impact um and actually palestine legal just put out an amazing new resource that does

2:02:02

something similar um and really traces the history around this it’s

2:02:08

it’s called the hashtag is distorted definition we have another hashtag around this

2:02:13

around this work uh which is really really great um i wanted to

2:02:19

yeah i definitely encourage and this is going back to i think what andrew was saying around the um making sure we

2:02:27

check our balance between the offensive and the defensive um making sure that we don’t all get

2:02:33

caught up in this iris stuff um you know and that we continue on the bds front we continue

2:02:40

uh to advance you know arguments uh how israel is an apartheid state um

2:02:46

you know all of that is crucial and so it would be you know um a total victory for

2:02:53

the you know for israel um and for for pro-israel lobby groups if we were all just distracted

2:02:59

by this ihra uh really um on the other hand i mean one

2:03:06

thing we’ve been trying to do is you know we’ve sort of recognized that like this is an important thing for us to work on as uh jews in

2:03:14

the palestine solidarity movement um so you know we are we’re putting attention on that but

2:03:20

at the same time we’re trying to figure out ways to go on the offensive um with it right like for example

2:03:26

you know they’re talking about you know apartheid saying apartheid is anti-semitism and israel’s racist

2:03:33

is anti-semitism so you know one of the one of the resources we have on our website is um is 11 examples of how israel is

2:03:42

actually a racist endeavor right um you know and and so we could you know we can use this

2:03:48

to to advance and you know maybe people are questioning it was like when they you know they banned kwaya from uh the careers against

2:03:55

israeli apartheid from the pride parade in in toronto like i think we had you know a lot of sort of middle-of-the-road

2:04:01

people asking like why right i mean so i think we need to use those opportunities to you know where

2:04:08

discourses they attempt to ban discourse uh to try to um insert question marks into people’s

2:04:15

minds and to and to try to advance our um our causes and you know it doesn’t have

2:04:22

to be clear-cut that basically is what i’m saying uh around the definitions question it’s tough and you know we debated

2:04:28

whether or not we we buy into this definitions game um you know they say that the ira

2:04:34

definition is the most widely accepted blah blah blah definition in the world um but you know they were

2:04:41

really the first ones to really engage in this political this politicization of

2:04:46

oppression definitions and and i might be wrong i don’t have the whole history but as far as you know i know they’ve

2:04:54

they’re really the first ones to really mobilize around definition and so it’s not surprising that you haven’t had other

2:05:00

states that have signed off on other definitions for example right um so you know i think that’s important to

2:05:06

keep in mind and it’s the same with the jerusalem declaration i think you know i think um there are a lot of

2:05:12

really good people that have that have signed on and i think for that i think they tried

2:05:18

um to accomplish two objectives right one was to uh you know

2:05:24

define anti-semitism in a better more appropriate way and the other was to uh critique and

2:05:30

respond to the ira definition and in some ways those objectives are contradictory and you know end up meaning that they fall

2:05:37

into some of the traps of the ira definition i think also in certain terms of language

2:05:44

strategically i have a sense that they try to appeal to some more mainstream audiences

2:05:49

uh and therefore you know gave into a few uh of you know problematic arguments and

2:05:57

and that was all included so i’m i’m hoping i mean yeah we’ll see how it plays out but i’m

2:06:02

hoping for you know that it will be beneficial um and that the

2:06:08

the problems with it you know i think it’s really important i think you know a lot of palestinians have really

2:06:13

um introduced some very challenging and and important critiques i think the

2:06:19

bnc critique the bds movement critique is really crucial to read and i’m sure we’re going to see

2:06:24

more and more of that um and you know one thing that we’re also working on with with

2:06:29

jewish voice for peace is uh putting out sort of guidelines on how to actually

2:06:35

fight anti-semitism uh including doing so intersectionally um and not isolating it and not

2:06:41

essentializing jews is the only ones that really need a definition to define their oppression you know um so watch for that sometime

2:06:48

soon uh just going back and to maybe conclude around the the order and council in in um in

2:06:55

ontario so first of all so it’s it’s a lot it’s sort of a law

2:07:00

you know um it’s it’s it’s really sort of mysterious to many people um it was intended to be a law in the

2:07:06

first place bill 168 uh we mobilized around it quite you know

2:07:12

in a cut on um and you know we ended up you know we we actually claimed it as a

2:07:18

partial victory um because they didn’t proceed with the actual law they ended up

2:07:24

passing it actually the day or a few days before it was supposed to go to committee and you had like over 100 people lining up

2:07:31

to speak out against it um they ended up passing it sort of by decree

2:07:36

um as an order in council which is not a legislative mechanism that’s used for such things in

2:07:43

general um and uh you know it also didn’t include reference to the examples though

2:07:49

they can be implied in any case it’s a bit more murky than it would have been if passed by law but is still a threat

2:07:57

and you know i think one piece of evidence so far that we’ve seen it being where we’ve seen it being used is

2:08:04

there was um a video of a palestinian student high school student taken down um

2:08:12

the minister of education ordered to take down it was a three-minute video in which the this student talked about

2:08:18

the palestinian struggle and instead of saying the israeli government he said the zionists right um and you know

2:08:25

when we first saw the video we’re like there’s nothing wrong with this video what’s what’s the problem the minister has been saying that this

2:08:30

video you know supports anti-semitic conspiracies conspiracy theories cetera et cetera um

2:08:36

and and the school boards bought into that and took it down and sent out the ira definition to teach

2:08:41

the public how to understand why this is anti-semitic without actually saying why um but as it turns out the reason was

2:08:48

because he said the zionists and before the ordering council was

2:08:53

passed they only talked about it as anti-israel or biased after the ordering council they talked about it as anti-semitic

2:08:59

so it sort of opened that door for the government to engage in that conversation um which is super

2:09:05

dangerous and um of course there’s also the this campaign against facebook declaring zionist as

2:09:11

as a stand-in for jew and therefore anti-semitic which we’re part of so anyways we have

2:09:17

to i think the response is to continue to um to violate the the ira definition i

2:09:24

mean not the real examples of anti-semitism but um you know especially

2:09:29

when it comes to talking about southern colonialism um you know making these connections all of

2:09:35

that just like you know not given to that and to to fight it and again try not to get caught up too much in the

2:09:42

defensive and and see find opportunities to you to go on the offensive as well

2:09:48

um and to really uh work towards um this world that we want to live in

2:09:55

um so yeah i’ll leave it there thank you so in the spirit of both wrapping up and

2:10:01

kind of continuing the conversation which there’ll be another one in two weeks one of the things that i think in

2:10:08

our organizing we’re seeing is like how do we de-exceptionalize these settler colonial institutions

2:10:13

and making them sites of struggle in which the definition of a positive definition

2:10:20

could be tacked on to other both grievances and imaginaries

2:10:25

and i think that we’ve done this in the work you know where we say bds is the floor

2:10:30

not the ceiling where we’ve applied a diversity of tactics and strategies where we’ve taken issue with museums including

2:10:37

now the moma fight strike momo where you can read about it where we’re

2:10:42

just like museum is fine but the museum is a settler colonial institution and it hides a bunch of

2:10:48

people that are of a certain class that puts a certain ideologies and so there’s a bunch of zionists at

2:10:55

moma for example who have a lot of wealth and who are dictating aesthetics and dictating

2:11:01

programming and dictating education and dictating who gets represented

2:11:06

right on stolen land in these kind of infrastructures i say all this to add that you know for

2:11:13

students that are afraid what are the relationships that can be developed between adjunct and tenured

2:11:20

and and students across student bodies and communities around the institutions in

2:11:26

which those walls can be both breached and made porous to allow for a different people power to

2:11:33

impact this conversation in addition to law in addition to lobbying in addition to

2:11:38

the intellectual work that’s happening so that you can both deal with things kind of

2:11:44

vertically but also build horizontally and we don’t have to choose offense and defense

2:11:49

but have that be in the world making of the visionary organizing that gracely boggs

2:11:54

would talk about so thank you all so so so so much

2:12:00

and it’s an honor erica chandini mark and corey and uh yeah in two weeks we’ll be doing

2:12:07

this again and this will be online for people um so that’s great to share thank you

2:12:13

all uh sally to you

2:12:22

yes so just to echo amin’s remarks i just want to extend um on behalf of the art gallery of

2:12:28

guelph and myself i would like to thank all of you who participated today erica chadni

2:12:34

mark and corey as well as to those who were listening to the talk i want to thank everyone for their

2:12:40

thankfulness for this very deeply nuanced and complex

2:12:46

um complicated conversation um as i mean uh mentioned our next uh

2:12:52

conversation will take place on saturday april the 12th or sorry 10th at noon um so please continue to follow both the

2:13:00

events section on the art gallery of guelph’s website and the decolonize this place website and their instagram for further updates

2:13:06

and information a happy weekend to everyone bye-bye

2:13:20

you

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