Indigeneity in the SWANA Region & the U.S. with Steven Salaita, Amrah Salomon-Johnson and Eman Ghanayem

<p>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 an orgy of consumerism on the aptly named Black Friday, 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. The ironies could scarcely be more glaring of celebrating Thanksgiving, and of doing so in this “National&nbsp;Native&nbsp;American Heritage&nbsp;Month,” cynically declared by the outgoing President even as he filled his administration with predatory agents for resource extraction industries. As his administration rushes to issue permits for more extraction and despoliation of Native lands before it hands that task over to Joe Biden, Israel seems to be using Trump’s waning days of power to accelerate its ongoing program of dispossession, home demolition, and land grabbing from the Palestinians, a people whose centuries-old presence in Palestine or Canaan makes them to all intents and purposes Indigenous to the land.</p> <p>This&nbsp;Sunday, &nbsp;November 29, 2020, we discuss a number of topics including the &nbsp;relationship between Indigenous activism in Palestine and Native America &nbsp;with our guests, Steven Salaita, Amrah Salomon-Johnson and Eman &nbsp;Ghanayem. How helpful is the concept of Indigeneity to either region, &nbsp;given the complexity of patterns of settlement, dispossession and &nbsp;displacement? How do we rethink the relation of Indigenous peoples to &nbsp;land, to movement, and to property and possession as well as notions of &nbsp;ethnic or racial identity? How do myths of destiny and priority, not to &nbsp;mention supremacy, seek to “indigenize” the settler? How does Indigenous &nbsp;organizing challenge walls and borders? In doing so, how can we imagine &nbsp;beyond the nation-state form?</p> <p>Steven Salaita&nbsp;is an independent scholar of indigenous and Arab &nbsp;Ame