indigeneity

Indigeneity is most basically defined as being descended from the earliest inhabitants of a place. However, it cannot be understood apart from settler colonialism and indigenous sovereignty. Indigeneity focuses on the relationship between indigenous people and places and the political movement toward decolonization. On the other hand, settler claims to indigeneity serve as a crucial tool in many settler colonial projects globally as they attempt the erasure of indigenous communities with ancestral and ongoing relationship to the land and the knowledges, cultures, and traditions that result from that relationship. Indigeneity has become a transnationalist analytical tool in identifying and dismantling settler colonialism.

Sources: Al-Shabaka; Yellowhead Institute; 28 Mag; Mahmoud Darwish; J. Kēhaulani Kauanui

right of return

The “right of return” is a human right and internationally acknowledged (if not always applied) legal right for people to return to their country of origin, particularly with regard to refugees and their descendants’ displacement from their homelands. In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 194 calling for the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes from which they were forced out by Israel. Israel continues to dispute this right as it seeks to maintain its genocidal and expansionist settler colonial project. The UN resolution guarantees this right to individuals only; however, for Palestinians, the right of return is collective. The basic fundamentals of Palestinian collective rights are known as Thawabit, “constants,” and include the rights of return, resistance and self-determination.

Sources: UNRWA; IMEU; Electronic Intifada

settler colonialism

Settler colonialism is the ongoing occupation of indigenous lands, the appropriation of natural resources for the economic benefit of the colonizers, and the displacement, subjugation, and/or elimination of indigenous people from that land. In settler colonialism, the invading forces attempt to become the majority population alongside their decimation of the original residents of the area through warfare, spread of infectious diseases, and other genocidal tactics. This type of colonization applies to nations including (but not limited to) North and South America, the Caribbean islands, New Zealand, Australia, and Israel. Settler colonialism is an ongoing structure, not a past historical event.

Sources: Global Social Theory (Settler Colonialism; ICCG – Ramallah 2015); J. Kēhaulani Kauanui

Zionism

Zionism is a political ideology and a form of Jewish nationalism that operates as settler colonialism. “It is the set of beliefs that drove the founding of the State of Israel in Palestine and continues to drive its expansion today. Zionism serves to justify the colonization of Palestine and the dispossession of Palestinian people through land confiscation, forced exile, and massacres.” 

Source: IJAN