Honoring Courage: Solidarity with Palestine in Indian Country during a Year of Genocide

Honoring Courage During A Year of Genocide -- Solidarity with Palestine in Indian Country

By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, December 19, 2024

Censored News honors the courage of Native People who stood in solidarity with Palestine and spoke out against genocide. During a year of genocide, most of the media in the United States published distractions and false narratives, aiding and abetting in war crimes and genocide.

Censored News honors the brave O'odham women of Gila River Indian Community in Arizona. At Laveen Village, Biden claimed to be issuing an apology to Native children who were victims of U.S. boarding schools. As Biden spoke, an O'odham woman held up this sign: "There Are Still Babies in Mass Graves. Your Apology Means Nothing!! Land Back."

Calling out to Biden, an O'odham woman yelled, "What about the people in Gaza! What about the people in Palestine!"
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/10/oodham-woman-becomes-hero-when-genocide.html

In Montreal, Kanien'kehà:ka women, Mohawk Mothers, planted a Great White Pine, the Haudenosaunee symbol of peace, in solidarity with Palestinians, at McGill University in November. It was uprooted in a hate crime.

Mohawk Mothers, representing themselves, filed their case with Canada's Supreme Court to protect the search for graves at McGill University. The university hospital, Allen Memorial Institute, was the site of MK-Ultra, the CIA's torture and mind control experiments. A teen survivor said her friend, a Native girl, disappeared. The survivor saw the hospital staff digging graves out back at night with red shovels.

The McGill site was a central location for torture experiments that used drugs and excessive amounts of electric shock on victims. Court records reveal that victims memories were erased. MK-Ultra sites were located in prisons, hospitals and mental institutions throughout the U.S. and used victims without their knowledge or consent. In Canada, Native children in residential schools were often placed in institutions and disappeared, especially the Inuit from the far north.
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/11/mohawk-mothers-deplore-hate-crime-great.html
Read more at Mohawk Nation News https://mohawknationnews.com/blog/

At the United Nations in New York, Anpo Jensen, Kiyuksa Tiospaye, Oglala Lakota of Pine Ridge, South Dakota, delivered the statement of the Global Indigenous Youth Caucus to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York.

"We are witnessing the genocide and displacement of Palestinian people. We demand the right of return to their ancestral homeland," the Global Indigenous Youth Caucus told the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues as it opened its session.
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/04/live-now-un-forum-on-indigenous-issues.html

Lakota Youths raised their voices for Palestine. "Our Liberation is Linked," the International Indigenous Youth Council, Oglala Lakota Chapter said.

"In a world plagued by injustices and oppression, the youth of the Oglala Lakota Nation raise their voices in support for Palestine. As descendants of a people who have faced centuries of systemic violence and displacement, we intimately understand the pain and suffering inflicted by colonialism and genocide."
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/03/lakota-youths-raising-voices-for.html

Coast Salish Water Warriors took to the Puget Sound in traditional canoes to block the MV Cape Orlando, a U.S. warship believed to be carrying weapons bound for Israel, from leaving the Port of Tacoma, Washington.

Indigenous protesters helped delay a United States military ship believed to be loaded with weapons for Israel on Nov. 6, with water warriors blocking the ship in canoes. The protest began before dawn at the Port of Tacoma, on the traditional homelands of the Puyallup Tribe. Around 2 p.m. the protest expanded to a water resistance, with Indigenous water warriors taking to the Puget Sound in traditional canoes in an attempt to block the boat from leaving the harbor. https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2023/11/20/israel-native-tacoma-palestine-protest

At the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Native students were at the Pro-Palestine Encampment at the Duck Pond. Source New Mexico reporter Austin Fisher reports police used yellow tape to establish a barrier around the encampment space in the Duck Pond and arrested anyone caught in the area, or who refused to leave.
https://sourcenm.com/2024/05/15/gaza-solidarity-encampment-defies-unms-ultimatum-for-12-hours-group-told-to-leave-again/

On the Navajo Nation, pro-Palestinian demonstrator held up a sign outside Navajo President Buu Nygren's office during a Christmas tree lighting ceremony at the Veterans Memorial Park in Window Rock on Dec. 14, 2023. Article by Marley Shebala, Dine' Zuni Pueblo journalist. https://navajotimes.com/reznews/84801/

During this year of genocide in Palestine, the Raytheon Dine' Facility located on the Navajo Nation at its commercial farm, Navajo Agricultural Products Industry, near Shiprock, New Mexico, produced missile parts for Raytheon, a top war profiteer in Palestine.

Raytheon, now RTX, partners with Rafael, an Israeli weapons producer. Raytheon said, "Raytheon Diné stores and generates parts for 12 missile programs such as the Tomahawk cruise missile, Javelin weapon system, and Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile."

Diné (Navajo) Demetrius Johnson, The Red Nation, at The National Day of Mourning at Plymouth Rock, on the turkey-laden day when genocide is celebrated in the U.S., said, "We have seen how mainstream media is used by the settler states to justify, perpetuate, then make invisible ~yet again~ a genocide in Palestine without consequence. We have seen how the truth is suppressed and how journalists are slaughtered by the dozens. Even they realize that the truth is our greatest weapon. Our power lies in our words.
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/12/dine-demetrius-johnson-red-nation-at.html

At the 'Race, Liberation and Palestine' 'Rutgers University Refused to Shut Down Event after Congressman's Demand. Rutgers, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, didn't shut down the event, but then it suspended Students for Justice in Palestine, after the Biden administration announced a civil rights investigation. The U.S. Office of Civil Rights publishes a list of schools 'under investigation.'

Students for Justice in Palestine at Rutgers responded and said it was censorship aimed at silencing voices for Palestine. Earlier, the threats, pressure from a U.S. Congressman, and 12,000 e-mails, didn't shut down the event. Nick Estes, Lakota, Lower Brule in South Dakota, said the U.S. had more than 400 federal institutions dedicated to removing Native children from their families, all across the United States, and in Alaska and the Pacific. "Look at the headstones at Carlisle Barracks, where there are more than 200 headstones," Estes said.
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2023/12/race-liberation-and-palestine-watch.html

Dine' (Navajo) supporters of Palestine, including young Dine' women, were harassed, manhandled, arrested by Navajo Nation Police in Navajo Capitol at a public rally. "They had Native snipers pointing their rifles at Indigenous Peoples," Koi said, describing how Dine' were brutalized by both Navajo police and campaign staffers of the Democrats vice presidential candidate Tim Walz. Dragged from the event for no reason, Koi was pinned to the ground by three Navajo Nation cops. He was handcuffed and shackled and taken to a concrete slab jail cell, in Crownpoint, New Mexico, in the eastern Navajo Nation. He was charged with two counts and released before dawn. Video and article by The Red Nation. November 2024.
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/11/new-red-nation-dine-for-palestine.html

https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/10/dine-supporters-for-palestine-removed.html

At the Convening of the Four Winds, Mvskoke Phillip Deere Roundhouse, in Oklahoma, Casey Camp-Horinek, Ponca, said the gathering, focused on the Rights of Nature and protection of the water and rivers, was a continuation of the Warrior Way. Casey spoke of the joy of being with her family here, and remembering the AIM warriors, her family at Wounded Knee.

"And yet my babies in Palestine are being murdered. I see the war in Ukraine. I see the United States government still inflicting genocide on my people, and trying to kill the river herself."
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/09/listen-live-convening-of-four-winds-at.html

'Spaces of Exception' film reveals resistance to the fat takers, from Native lands to Palestine.

'Spaces of Exception was shown at McGill University in Montreal, with Mohawk Mothers, in a packed room. During this year of genocide, the film was shown on the Navajo Nation, in the Navajo Capitol of Window Rock and nearby Fort Defiance in Arizona in 2024.

On the Navajo Nation, the two day event on April 26 and April 27 was organized by K’é Infoshop, The Red Nation, and the Palestinian Youth Movement. The public was invited to the film screening of the documentary Spaces of Exception featuring interviews with Native relatives across this continent and Palestinian relatives in refugee camps in Palestine and Lebanon. The screening was followed by a discussion with one of the filmmakers, Matt Peterson. On April 27 they hosted a panel discussion with Diné and Palestinian on the shared struggle against colonialism and imperialism.
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/04/today-dine-and-palestinian-solidarity.html

The film shows how places are defined by their historical and spiritual resistance.

"We might be the ones holding the knife -- but it is the state that is the one who is still killing us." Those are the words of Dine' warrior Klee Benally, in 'Spaces of Exception."

"In the Navajo language, there is no word for relocation, it means to disappear and never be seen again."

The film, 'Spaces of Exception,' shown around the world this year, begins on Pine Ridge, with the history of the resistance to the 'fat takers,' and travels to the refugee camps of Palestine, before arriving at the land of Akwesasne Mohawk, and the words shared of true sovereignty.

Then, there are the images of the oil and gas, the fracking, and coal mining on the Navajo Nation, where Dine' say the true literacy once known, talking with the natural world, is being lost. Now, there is the destruction of the burial and sacred places, as asthma takes over lives.

Spaces of Exception comes out of the long-term multimedia project “The Native and the Refugee”, profiling Native lands in the United States alongside Palestinian refugee camps, and is directed by Matt Peterson and Malek Rasamny.

Spaces of Exception filmmaker Malek Rasamny said, "After Spaces of Exception’s sold-out theatrical premiere run at the historic Anthology Film Archives in New York City in October 2023 the film embarked on a world-tour of cinemas, art institutions, universities and community centers."

"Spaces of Exception is a documentary film that profiles the terrains of the Indian reservation and the Palestinian refugee camp, 'spaces of exception' that have become essential in the struggle for decolonization and indigenous autonomy."
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/02/spaces-of-exception-resistance-to-fat.html

Read more about Native Peoples support of Palestinians during a year of genocide:

https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/12/honoring-courage-during-year-of.html

Also see:

Interior Sec. Haaland's Pueblo is in the Ballistic Missile Parts Business
Censored News, Nov. 4, 2024

LAGUNA PUEBLO, New Mexico -- Interior Sec. Deb Haaland's Pueblo's enterprise, Laguna Industries, manufactures parts for both the ballistic missile, and parts for combat jets, including the F-15. Biden recently approved the sale of fifty F-15 jets to Israel in a $20 billion deal.
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/11/interior-sec-haalands-pueblo-is-in.html

New at Censored News

U.S. Border Patrol agents who murdered Raymond Mattia, Tohono O'odham, were identified in an amended complaint filed in federal court on Friday. Attorneys for Raymond's family filed summons for the three agents. The Tohono O'odham Nation government has not identified the tribal police officer involved.

https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/12/us-border-patrol-agents-who-murdered.html


About Censored News

Censored News was created in 2006, when journalist Brenda Norrell, a long time staff reporter for Indian Country Today, was censored and fired by the newspaper. Among the issues censored was the Raytheon Dine' Facility. ICT editors forbid even research about the weapons maker. Today, Censored News is in its 19th year. It is a collective with no ads or revenues, and is a service to Indigenous Peoples and human rights.