As an Arab American, I stand with the Sioux

James Zogby explains why he is encouraged to see Palestinians demonstrate their solidarity with Standing Rock

A protester blocks a highway in Mandan during a protest against plans to pass the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, North Dakota, last week. Stephanie Keith / Reuters

Last week, I joined several hundred protesters in a sit-in in front of the Army Corps of Engineers’ Headquarters in Washington, DC. We were protesting against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline designed to transport more than 500,000 barrels of fracked oil a day from North Dakota to be refined in Illinois.

The protest was part of an international day of solidarity with Native Americans at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. Demonstrations were held in more than 300 cities worldwide.

On one level, the issues involved are presented as complicated matters of economics, geography and law. On a more basic level, however, it is a simple question of justice.

Proponents of the pipeline argue that fracked oil is helping to make America energy independent. They maintain that the route they have chosen for the pipeline is the most cost-­effective one and they insist that the government has the right to claim the land along the route.

The Sioux tribe at the Standing Rock Reservation counter that the pipeline poses a threat to their main water supply. A leak would contaminate their drinking water.

They also argue that the land set aside for the pipeline contains many of their sacred sites and burial grounds – some of which have already been violated during construction. And they note that while the United States government claims ownership of the land through which the pipeline is to be built, this claim is the result of violations of treaties made with the tribe more than 150 years ago. They were dispossessed of their lands then and the dispossession continues.

Because it raises such fundamental issues of justice and history, Standing Rock has become the centre of a protest movement that has drawn thousands of native Americans from across the US and won the support of indigenous peoples around the globe. The protesters, who refer to themselves as “water protectors”, have engaged in massive and peaceful acts of civil disobedience only to be met with a heavily militarised police forces using rubber bullets, tear gas and power hoses spraying demonstrators with water in below-freezing weather. The resulting scenes of violence have been shocking.

I am proud of the many Palestinian Americans who have joined the protests in North Dakota, and I’m thrilled to see Palestinians in the occupied lands demonstrate their solidarity with Standing Rock. It is natural that they do so in recognition of their shared narrative.

The Zionist settlers who came to Palestine in the 1920s recognised this. They sometimes referred to the Palestinian ­Arabs whom they encountered as “Red Indians” – “savages” to be defeated, obstacles to their ambitions who had to be removed to pave the way for the realisation of their dream of creating a Jewish enterprise in Palestine.

Instead of rejecting this identification with the indigenous peoples of North America, Palestinians embraced it. The late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat often spoke of the lessons learnt from this shared history, saying that his people were fighting so that their fate would not be the same. The man dubbed the "national poet of Palestine", Mahmoud Darwish, carried this identification further in his poem Speech of the Red Indian. In it he addressed the foreign invaders: "You who come from beyond the sea, bent on war, don't cut down the tree of our name, don't gallop your flaming horses across the open plain ... Our pastures are sacred, our spirits inspired. The stars are luminous words where our fable is legible from beginning to end."

The parallels in the plight of these two peoples remain. This was made evident in two recent United Nations agency reports. While the Standing Rock protests are focused on protecting the tribe’s water supply and stopping the desecration of their burial sites, Unesco passed a resolution last month condemning, among other things, the destruction of Palestinian ceme­teries in Jerusalem (one of which became the site of a “Museum of Tolerance” and another a public space which, adding insult to injury, recently hosted an Israeli wine festival). Another alarming UN report noted that only 10 per cent of Palestinians in Gaza have access to clean water.

When I addressed the solid­arity rally that accompanied the sit-in, I spoke of this shared history of dispossession and dispersal.

I noted that just as it is imperative that Americans recognise that their nation was born in original sin – the crime of ethnic cleansing committed against the indigenous people – they must acknowledge that this was true of Israel. I know that it’s not what they mean, but it is what I hear when American and Israeli leaders speak of “our shared values”.

And so as an American, and especially as an Arab American, I am proud to stand with the Standing Rock Sioux because the struggle for justice is one and is playing out daily in North Dakota and across the occupied Palestinian lands.

Dr James Zogby is president of the Arab American Institute

On Twitter: @aaiusa