“We know the entire history and future of Palestine because we have lived it. We endure the settler colonial project that calls itself the United States. We survived the elimination and removal of our ancestors. We are in our fifth century of resistance. We know that Palestine’s future is a certain future because we are still here!”
—The Red Nation’s message to the Free Palestine National March on Washington, November 2023
We have always believed Palestine is the tip of the spear in the fight against colonialism, the guiding light toward liberation and decolonization everywhere. Over the course of 500 years of Indigenous resistance in the Americas, it’s remained crucial to remember our collective histories and to nurture the spirit of resistance uniting Indigenous peoples around the world. Land Day is one such act of remembrance.
Each year, Land Day signals the coming spring, announced by the blooming of red poppies across the region. For generations, the land bore witness to stories of survival, sacrifice, and resistance, holding the scars of settler violence and reminding us of our shared struggle. The red blankets of the fields mark an annual renewal in our commitment to the struggle for Palestine.
We acknowledge that Land Day is not only a commemoration of a historical event but a continuation of the struggle for decolonization, which is actively and bravely fought for in Gaza and the West Bank. Demonstrating continued commitment to the land and to the struggle against Zionist colonization, Land Day is a reminder that Palestine will never submit to settler colonialism. Our struggles are united in this commitment; Zionism is only one form of settler colonialism. In their fight against Zionism, Palestinians have shown the world new ways to resist settler colonialism. Palestinian resistance has not only strengthened our own analyses against the settler project, it has provided us with tools and strategies to combat settler colonialism on Turtle Island and everywhere else colonialism exists. The struggle for a free Palestine is the struggle for decolonization everywhere.
The Red Nation has been an advocate for Palestine since the group’s beginnings. We see ourselves as a continuation of the Red Power Movement of the 1960s and 70s, which in itself was a continuation of the Pueblo Revolt, the Battle of Greasy Grass, and the countless rebellions that have ensured our existence within our homelands. We see our rebellions mirrored in the Al-Aqsa Flood, Land Day, and the Great March of Return. We have used the tools and principles of these rebellions to further our 500-year-long resistance.
We see Palestine in ourselves. We hold Palestinian flags and adorn ourselves with keffiyehs at Standing Rock, Mauna Kea, and on the National Day of Mourning. We see empty settler ideology manifesting itself in colonial monuments, land theft, and normalization of state violence within the Global North. We see olive trees in our buffalo. We see the theft of Palestinian organs as the bounty of redskins. We see stolen Palestinian children as our children, who were stolen by both boarding schools and the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG). We witness how the limbs of our children make their way into plastic bags both here and there. We see Palestinian political prisoners as our own. Less than two months before the first Land Day in 1976, Leonard Peltier was arrested during the aftermath of the Reign of Terror on the Oglala Sioux Reservation. Forty-nine years later, Indian Country received news that Leonard Peltier was going home — the same weekend Palestinian political prisoners were returned and thousands displaced by the war on Gaza made their way back home.
Palestine is a mirror. We confront the same settler project that demands the removal of the native by either displacement or destruction. Our Indigenous existence poses a contradiction to the existence of the settler. The settler goal of elimination is evident, not just materially but also ideologically and symbolically. To that end, we reject the narratives of normalization that deny the legitimacy of Palestinian resistance. The language of normalization enforces coexistence and peace, ignoring the immeasurable violence of settler colonialism and obfuscating all acts of resistance that do not fit within this narrative. We reject the tone policing of occupied people; anger with and rejection of the settler state is righteous and legitimate.
Our very existence today as Indigenous people of Turtle Island is the direct result of our ancestors’ refusal to surrender to the demands of U.S. settler colonialism. Indigenous resistance in all forms is always legitimate in the face of genocide and land theft. We understand Palestine as part of the continuum of Indigenous resistance and unapologetically support Palestinian resistance wherever it occurs.
Our solidarity is a bridge. We reject the settler state of Israel just as we reject the settler state of the U.S., and so must anyone in solidarity with the Indigenous nations of Turtle Island. The rights to land and dignity that we demand for our relatives in Palestine are the same that we demand for ourselves.
We see Palestine as an alternative path where the Native Nations of Turtle Island had an opportunity or chance for an alternate future. We believe in this alternate future for Palestine — that their future isn’t fated to be as brutal as ours. To witness the struggles of Palestinians today is like looking back in time to the most violent parts of our own conquest. It is also seeing their future as our future; their dignity as our dignity.
In spring 2019, Palestinian journalist and peace activist Ahmed Abu Artema visited The Red Nation during his first trip to the so-called United States. Ahmed was a key organizer of the 2018 Great March of Return in Gaza. A week before Land Day and the first anniversary of the Great March of Return in Gaza, he was welcomed into our office in Tiwa Territory, otherwise known as Albuquerque. We shared a meal, we shared stories, and we built bridges across the world. He visited the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center where he saw traditional woven belts made by Pueblo People. He was surprised to learn that the designs were not Palestinian. Tragically, the next time we heard news about Ahmed was in October 2023, when Israel bombed his home in Gaza and murdered his 13-year-old son. His last word was “Dad.”
Thirteen days before the Al-Aqsa Flood, we hosted Palestinian poet, journalist, and author Mohammed El-Kurd at the new location of the Larry Casuse Freedom Center. We recorded The Red Nation Podcast episode “You ain’t a leftist if you haven’t left yet.” Three days later, in front of Rio Arriba County offices, Mohammed stood with us at a celebration of the halted resurrection of a statue of conquistador Juan de Oñate. This celebration turned into a failed mass shooting when Ryan Martinez, wearing a MAGA hat, shot relative protector Jacob Johns. Miraculously, the Trump supporter’s gun jammed on the second shot. We were armed with only our ancestors and morning prayers.
We mourn those lost in the struggle for a free Palestine. We mourn for a father who has lost his son, but we acknowledge that we have gained armies of ancestors. Much like Jacob Johns, the warrior who was struck by a Trump supporter’s bullet, we fight to stay alive and in this struggle. This Land Day, we reaffirm our belief in a future where we will outlive and outlast the empires that will crumble under the weight of their conceit, a future where land and relatives will be returned and we are no longer “Indigenous” in relationship to the settler states. For the Indigenous Nations of Turtle Island, we too are the unattended coals — enough to start a fire — and Palestine lights our way.
The Red Nation is a coalition of Native and non-Native activists, educators, students, and community organizers advocating Native liberation that formed to address the marginalization and invisibility of Native struggles within mainstream social justice organizing, and to foreground the targeted destruction and violence towards Native life and land. Their statement appears in the sixteenth issue of The New York War Crimes.