Nadya Raja Tannous, a members of the Palestinian Youth Movement—United Sates, writes of the parallels between the situation of Native people and Palestinians—and more.
Why did I go in the first place? Because somewhere in the awkward power dynamic of being a US citizen, a non-native inhabitant of Turtle Island, and a Palestinian in the Diaspora, I saw the struggle for livelihood and culture, the struggle against settler-colonialism, the struggle to protect the sacred and maintain your own legitimacy, and the ever ominous force of erasure and historical amnesia. What I later saw at Standing Rock both embodied this and became bigger than it; as a Mohawk Elder said to me, “Without water, we [humans] are infertile dust”.
Palestinians join Standing Rock Sioux to protest Dakota Access Pipeline
Photo: Haltom El-Zabri with creative help from Palestinian Youth Movement-USA.