On Indigeneity from California to Palestine with Rana Barakat and Mark Minch-de Leon

<p>On the weekend after the so-called Thanksgiving holiday, which celebrates the nineteenth-century myth of Native American generosity towards the Pilgrim settlers in the 17th-century, and is immediately followed by the annual orgy of consumerism, we are hosting a conversation about the meaning and political force of the notion of Indigeneity in the United States and the SWANA Region that we regularly cover. We discuss a number of topics including the relationship between Indigenous activism in Palestine and Native America with our guests, Rana Barakat and Mark Minch-de Leon. How helpful is the concept of Indigeneity to either region, given the complexity of patterns of settlement, dispossession and displacement? How do myths of destiny and priority, not to mention supremacy, seek to “indigenize” the settler? How does Indigenous organizing challenge walls and borders? In doing so, how can we imagine beyond the nation-state form? Settler states and corporations have always aimed to appropriate the land and resources. How is that manifesting in ongoing struggles in both of these “extractive zones,” as scholar Macarena Gomez-Barrís has called it? How have questions around water extraction and defilement become central organizing issues for inventive politics in both regions? How will the return of a Republican majority, slim as it is, to the US House and the rise of an openly fascisict Israeli government impact the Indigenous populations of both regions? Is it just more of the same?&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Rana Barakat</strong> is Associate Professor of History at Birzeit University in Palestine. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and her research interests include the history and historiography of colonialism, nationalism, and cultures of resistance. She is currently working on a book monograph titled <em>Lifta and Resisting the Museumification of Palestine: Indigenous History of the Nakba</em>, which advances an indigenous understanding of time, space, and memory in Palestine by focusing on the det