Author Nick Estes
As part of an ongoing dialogue with the Native rights movement in the United States, Adalah USA Representative Nadia Ben-Youssef recently sat down with Melanie Yazzie and Nick Estes, scholar-activists and founders of Red Nation, a coalition of Native and non-Native activists, educators, students and community organizers advocating Native liberation. They discussed the points of intersection between Palestinian and Native histories and consider ways forward to reclaim memory as a force for collective liberation.
Nick Estes: While the Nakba was taking place in Palestine, Native peoples in the United States faced what is known as “the era of termination.” Termination was meant to forcibly assimilate Native peoples into white culture while in Palestine, Zionism emphasized segregating Jews and Arabs instead. But in both places, dispossession and expulsion were the order of the day.