Insights on Indigenous liberation from the Bandung of the North
This article summarizes key insights from the opening session of the 2024 Bandung Conference of the North, held in Montreal on September 27-29.
This session, titled “Reflecting on liberation in a colony of total and partial resettlement,” focused on the question of Indigenous liberation in a settler-colonial context, whether in cases of near-total resettlement like in so-called Canada, or cases of partial resettlement like in the colonization of Palestine.
Panelists
The panel featured the following speakers:
- Katsi’tsakwas Ellen Gabriel, Indigenous political activist from Kahnawake
- Omar Barghouti, Palestinian activist and co-founder of the BDS movement
- Michèle Sibony, pro-Palestinian Jewish activist based in France
- Amzat Boukari-Yabara, Martinican-Beninese writer and activist
The panelists’ speeches all related to the effects of settler-colonialism on the erasure of Indigenous ways of being, and also on the question of liberating settler-occupied territory. Here are two key takeaways from the discussion.
Settler colonialism leads to an erasure of Indigenous ways of being and knowing
Ellen Gabriel emphasised the role of education in the erasure of Indigenous peoples. The real historical experience of Indigenous peoples is not known to most settlers, because it is not taught in schools. But to understand what decolonization is, you first have to know the history of dispossession and imperialism that Indigenous peoples have withstood. Understanding this history shows you that the Canadian system is not a democracy, and does not guarantee freedom. For Gabriel, real freedom is self-determination, which means figuring out how we can preserve the land. Gabriel stated that the small territories that Indigenous lands have been reduced to are not sufficient for Indigenous peoples’ survival.
Connecting freedom to preservation and thriving of Indigenous ways of knowing, Gabriel said that self-determination is necessary for Indigenous peoples’ survival and to prevent them from becoming a footnote of history. She said that Indigenous languages are important because they allow Indigenous peoples to reinforce their identity, and to give themselves strength and power. Sadly, only 3 Indigenous languages here are expected to survive this century. Gabriel said that Indigenous peoples need to revive the control they used to have, in the same way that they’re trying to revive the role that Indigenous women played in the survival of their communities and languages. She described how Indigenous women would use magazines and cut out pictures for Indigenous children to learn their language.
Omar Barghouti spoke similarly of the centuries of dehumanization and subjugation of the Palestinian people by Europeans. The physical erasure of Palestinians and their territory leads to an epistemic and cultural erasure, since you can’t be blamed for destroying something that doesn’t exist. Barghouti dates this policy back to the Doctrine of Discovery, which constructed Indigenous peoples as inferior or nonexistent.
Gabriel pointed out that the erasure of Indigenous ways of being is replaced by the entitlement of settlers’ presence on Indigenous lands. She said that the Canadian government doesn’t want settlers to know that all of Canada is an occupying state, and that settlers don’t have a right to be on this land. That right belongs to Indigenous peoples. She said that settlers need to understand tfhat their prosperity is a result of the genocide of the Indigenous peoples of this land. In contrast, the prosperity of Indigenous peoples is completely dependent on the occupying state.
Gabriel and Michele Sibony both spoke of the role of public naming in the cultural erasure of Indigenous peoples. Sibony said that many places in Palestine lost their original names over the course of Israeli colonization, and without signs, people have no idea of the history of the land. Similarly, Gabriel said that the renaming of streets in so-called Montreal with Kanienʼkéha names was important for people to know the history and to learn to pronounce Kanienʼkéha words. And Amzat Boukari-Yabara spoke about how the Haitian revolution restored the original name of Haiti to the territory that was colonially known as Saint-Domingue, describing this as a fundamentally decolonial act.
Boukari-Yabara also spoke of the destruction and creation of culture in settler-colonial contexts. He said that settler-colonialism is often achieved through cultural destruction in which the occupier appropriates the culture of the occupied by erasing the occupied themselves. At the same time, he pointed out that cultural products are also products of struggle that have a political dimension, taking négritude and créolisation in Martinique as examples.
Decolonization requires self-determination, land back, and active involvement of settlers
Ellen Gabriel said that decolonization is about respecting nature, and must involve land repatriation to Indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples have watched as their land gets taken away until there’s barely anything left of it, and this is why land back is so important. Gabriel said that Indigenous land back activists don’t want to kick settlers out of their homes, but at the same time, Indigenous peoples have a right to self-determination in international human rights law. This is a right to control what happens in their homelands, territories, schools, and society at large.
Michèle Sibony quoted a text from Omar Barghouti saying that self-determination applies to Indigenous peoples, and not settlers. For settlers, there can be either expulsion or ethical integration, and ethical integration can only take place after the end of Zionism. She pointed out that in the examples of Algeria, South Africa, Kanaky (New Caledonia), and Palestine, Indigenous liberation organizations did not call for the expulsion of settlers, but rather for equality with the settlers. As such, Indigenous liberation has always posed the question of partnership with settlers.
Gabriel stated that Indigenous peoples want to prosper and thrive, not just to survive, and that settlers should be the allies, not the enemies of Indigenous peoples. But until the genocidal history of Canada is taught, there will be no progress, and Indigenous peoples will continue to resist with blockades. When Indigenous peoples take up arms to defend themselves, it’s because there are no options left. She insisted that settlers must put pressure on Canadian political leaders to change their relationship with Indigenous peoples.
In the same way, Omar Barghouti said that violence never starts with the oppressed. Where you start your timeline matters in studying oppressed people. Before October 7, Israel had been escalating aggression on Palestinians to force their surrender, so the situation must be understood in the context of apartheid. Since oppression is the root of violence, we have to end oppression. He said that as an Indigenous people, the Palestinians have the ethical high ground in the genocidal conflict they face with Israel, but that they need the collective power that people all across the world can help to build.
Amzat Boukari-Yabara made similar points, saying that the fundamental element of liberation in Martinique concerns the concentration of land ownership. Settlers took the entirety of the territory when they arrived in the 17th century, and that legacy remains today with the small class of landowners in Martinique known as békés. He mentioned that Martinicans are completely dependent on a government that is dominated by white politicians from metropolitan France who have worked in Martinique’s civil service. This leads to a problem in which an independence struggle in Martinique may lead to an independence dominated by the wealthy settlers. Boukari-Yabara said that the key question is always the same: who makes the decisions? He quoted the Martinican politician Pierre Aliker in saying that the best specialists on Martinique are the Martinicans themselves, and this is the way in which the question of self-determination must be posed.
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