Hello!
Welcome to Digestable, your mouthful of things happening in the world. It’s the first post in awhile. For those of you who have subscribed since August, thanks for doing so!
Today’s ferments:
When writing a cover letter for what would become my first job in Vermont, I made a point to show that I knew some stuff about this place. At the time, I didn’t live here; I’d been around, made some friends, and could cite the policy that bans billboards in the state by number. So I did some research about relevant food access programs, and learned about Abenaki Helping Abenaki, which brings together farmers, volunteers, and food system infrastructure to preserve heritage crops and feed members of our four state-recognized tribes. I mentioned it in my cover letter.
At the end of my first week at work, I found myself in a conversation with more seasoned staff, one of whom had recently attended a contentious panel about Abenaki heritage. The contention was, and is, this: are the Vermont Abenaki in fact Abenaki? The Odonak people, who mostly live in what is now Canada, say no. The Vermont Abenaki say yes, and when asked to prove their genealogy, cite the impacts of the Vermont Eugenics Survey.
What did I know? If I had learned anything about being in the struggle alongside Indigenous people - and anti-gentrification organizers, for that matter - it was that you don’t show up and act like you know better than people who have been there. I kept my mouth shut and listened. I heard there were compelling reasons on both sides, and our organization wasn’t tied to the issue closely enough to have to choose.
In the last few months, investigations have shown increasing evidence to support the claims of the Odonak, and the falsehoods of the Vermont Abenaki. A feature in VT Digger, plus a series from Brave Little State, illuminate that this additional information has made the situation - one many had determined to difficult to talk about - much clearer.
Does this sound familiar? It does to me. As the child of secular, lefty Jews, I knew that there was ~something going on with Israel and Palestine. But I didn’t really know what, and I didn’t really know how to ask, and I didn’t get the sense that it was super important. Palestine mostly didn’t come up in the organizing communities I was a part of, and while eventually I learned that Israel colonized land that Palestinian people had been on for generations, I still had the idea that untangling this conflict was out of my league.
A few years ago, I got up to speed enough to see that while it may be complicated, it’s certainly not too complicated to talk about. I’ve had some productive conversations with family and friends about not buying Puma sneakers or not going on Birthright. Once I started to do my homework on Israel, I was able to see the alignment between that colonial project and all the other ones I’d found easier to recognize, like the history of the US or the millennia of exploitation of the people and resources on the African continent.
One of the stickiest points I’ve encountered in talking with American Jews about Israel is the idea that Israel is the rightful homeland of Jews. I know as well as any Jew that we have been persecuted and displaced for centuries. My ancestors escaped pogroms in Eastern Europe and came to New York City, passing through Ellis Island and assimilating into white American culture as a survival strategy. My family has been there since - I’m a fifth-generation New Yorker. I understand what it means to feel connected to a place, to feel protective of it, to know it as home.
But that doesn’t make me an Indigenous person. I have felt a connection to the way that Indigenous people talk about Indigeneity; I have also felt connected to the idea that it is a political identity. As a queer person, I can see how a rich tradition you’re born into, that determines your relationships and sense of self, shapes your political identity. But that doesn’t make me Indigenous. I’m a person whose ancestors were displaced, and I have feelings and recognize when other people say things that make sense to me, but that doesn’t make me Indigenous.
When Jews claim a right to the land that Palestinians call stolen and settler governments call Israel, that doesn’t make Jews Indigenous. I am not a historian, and cannot enumerate sources that tie the Jewish people or faith to a place. But the holiest sites are holy to people of many faiths; that does not mean anyone owns them. And the idea of ownership as a means of domination (or protection) is a colonial one.
The land that is “Israel” may be the closest thing that Jews have to a single homeland, given the history of displacement, forced removal, and extermination that we know to be true. But what if all eight billion of us decided to claim the Cradle of Humankind, an early archaeological site where hominid activity was found, our rightful homeland?
That doesn’t make sense, and it’s easy to see that. But I had trouble putting my finger on why, until I heard some words from Kim Tallbear, prolific writer and researcher on the idea of Native DNA and belonging. She is quoted in the Brave Little State series on the Abenaki/Odonak conflict, and explains that Indigeneity is something we trace through living communities - living relationships to the land and each other.
This makes a world of sense to me. I still identify as a New Yorker, even though I don’t live there. If I have a child, it is likely they will feel a connection to New York City. If that child has a child, and New York City is still above sea level, they too may even feel such a connection. But if that child has a child - three generations is the cutoff for justifying Native ancestry - it is very unlikely that they will feel that connection. The link is easy to prove, sure. But the connection is what makes it lasting, and still true.
When Zionist Jews claim a right to the land the Israeli government has stolen from Palestinians, it is on a scale far more absurd and serious than that of my theoretical great-grandchild. Working from the definition of ‘living communities’ and ‘living relationships to land,’ it’s impossible to say that a homogenous Jewish Zionist community can lay claim to that shared holy place.
The beginning of the Jewish diaspora dates to 136 CE - over 1800 years ago. Since then, Jews have found home in stories and songs and traditions, and on other land, as both settlers and refugees. It may well have taken more than three generations to feel that the tie to that land had been severed, but 1800 years is a long time. Is it fair to claim ownership after that much time? If the way you return is with bombs and displacement, I don’t think so.
Is it acceptable to transmute Jewishness into a political identity - Zionism - that relies on destruction of the homeland, and an ethno-nationalist idea of who Jews are? Jews were once considered a socio-cultural group; it was Zionism that brought about the idea that Jews are a race. This kind of categorization, ‘are you in the box or are you out of it’ thinking, is a method of social control that we see all over the global history of racism and colonization.
In the third chapter of the Brave Little State series, there’s some discussion of the common phenomenon of white American families to claiming ‘part Native’ status. This is an effort to evade identification with the colonizer and perpetrator of harm. Kim Tallbear articulates that this is an example of late-stage colonization, explaining that this is a way to obscure colonizers’ role in perpetrating harm.
It’s hard to not see the parallel here. Whether or not Jews can claim distant ancestral connection to land, arriving as colonizers and justifying that destruction in the name of indigeneity is the same story with different context. You cannot buy, or bomb, your way to a living relationship with land.
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There is plenty more to say about the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the atrocities perpetrated by the Israeli state. I am sure that my words will not sit well with all of you; I invite conversation, and thank you for reading.
If you feel moved to action, you can write to the President every day calling for a ceasefire; follow the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights and Jewish Voice for Peace; or donate to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. For news from Palestine, follow Bisan Owda, Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, Noura Erakat, and others. Find Palestine solidarity actions in your community. Talk to your loved ones about what’s happening in Palestine. Take care of each other and stay strong.
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