What Indians And Palestinians Share

Controversy over Indian rights in Connecticut recently intensified when the federal government reversed its recognition of Stonington's Eastern Pequots and Kent- based Schaghticoke tribes. Overall, officials and the public appear pleased. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said, “One reason this is so historic is because no positive recognition decision has been reversed before. This is a first for the nation, which makes it all the more significant and satisfying,” according to The Litchfield County Times. Clearly, it's not satisfying for Connecticut's indigenous peoples as their rights and attachment to the land continue to be challenged even centuries after first contact with European settlers. Due-process arguments put into high relief the irony experienced by America's native peoples in obtaining recognition: they must prove they exist. They must demonstrate that their people and cultures actually survived government intentions to eradicate them and seize land on which survival depended. Meanwhile, the original injustice is submerged in a bureaucratic system organized to disavow it: even applying for BIA recognition costs millions, encouraging many tribes to resort to casino investors despite their corruption of traditional native values. Indian participation (let alone success) in this admittedly suspect process arouses only insecurity and hostility among my non-Indian Kent neighbors. Tellingly, references to original dispossession and the enduring traumatic impact of European contact are circumvented. Expressions of collective responsibility or apologies are absent. Most Americans experience a kind of collective denial about our shameful history. Yet its legacy lives dangerously on — not just at home but also in our foreign policy. As Attorney General Blumenthal began challenging Schaghticoke recognition, then- Palestinian presidential candidate Mahmoud Abbas was visiting some of the 400,000 Palestinian refugees in camps in Lebanon, reassuring them that their right to return to their homes in what is now Israel would not be abandoned in future negotiations. There are more than 6 million Palestinian refugees who have been waiting to go home since the 1947-49 Naqba(“catastrophe”). Most refugees live within 60 miles of their former homes, some close enough to see and weep for lost orchards and fields. Like America's native peoples, Palestinians bear the burden of proof of their existence and right to their ancestral lands.

What Indians And Palestinians Share
by Justine McCabe
ZNet