NAISA Council Statement on Palestine

Approved by NAISA Council, 3 April 2024

We, as members of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, condemn in the strongest possible terms the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the ongoing settler colonial elimination targeting Palestinians. In accordance with international law, we call for an immediate ceasefire, immediate access for humanitarian aid, an impartial investigation into all atrocities committed, an end to the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees. We also call for an end to all foreign military aid to Israel. We extend our deepest solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, the occupied territories, and those living in the diaspora as they strive to survive this genocidal onslaught by all means necessary.

Colonialism and genocide ought to be the most recognizable forms of oppression, which should also make them easy crimes to prevent and punish. This is not the case. The ongoing Israeli genocide against Palestinians is perhaps the first genocide in history to be broadcast in realtime. Yet global leaders and institutions seem either unwilling or powerless to stop it despite widespread opposition.

Indigenous peoples best understand what it means to be subjects of settler states that deny, conceal, or attempt to erase their own complicity in genocide and colonialism. That is why we have formed intellectual communities and professional organizations such as the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) — to study and resist colonialism, in all its manifestations, and to center the intellectual abundance and diverse experiences of Indigenous peoples.

Since October 7, 2023, the NAISA Council has engaged in months-long deliberations and two votes at regular meetings to issue a statement calling for a ceasefire. This happened during a critical time of mass suffering and widespread, global backlash against Palestinian solidarity. We recognize that individual council members and many NAISA community members have been organizing for Palestine solidarity within their own institutional and community capacities and have been the target of smear campaigns meant to silence academic freedom, Indigenous activism, and Palestinian scholars. We uphold the principles of academic freedom and the right to resist colonialism in all its forms. We stand in solidarity with all the faculty and students who have been threatened, suspended, or fired for their opposition to the ongoing Palestinian genocide. We strongly condemn university administrators’ use of violence and threats of violence against students, faculty, and staff voicing pro-Palestinian positions.

While politicians and university administrators have criminalized non-violent, student-led anti-genocide protests on college campuses — calling them “unsafe,” Israel has destroyed, in whole or in part, every university in Gaza, making no space safe for education. Human rights experts have deemed the obliteration of Gaza’s educational system a “scholasticide.” Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli army has killed more than 5,479 students, 261 teachers and 95 university professors in Gaza, and over 7,819 students and 756 teachers have been injured. We stand in solidarity with all Palestinian educators, students, and education workers and mourn the loss of those killed and injured by this genocidal campaign.

We reject the framing of this conflagration as a “conflict” that began on October 7, 2023.  “Israel’s genocide on Palestinians in Gaza is an escalatory stage of a longstanding settler colonial process of erasure [of Palestinian life],” a recent UN report assessing the situation concludes. The Palestinian Nakba has been unfolding for more than seven decades. Israel has suffocated all aspects of Palestinian cultural, economic, and political life in an attempt to expropriate and control Palestinian lands and resources. Genocide is inherent to settler colonialism as a process that attempts to eliminate and replace Native peoples.

For this reason, NAISA was an early supporter of the academic boycott of Israeli institutions and has remained a committed ally to Palestinian academic freedom in the face of Israeli repression. We issue this current statement in the spirit of our 2013 statement that reads in part: “[W]e strongly protest the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and the legal structures of the Israeli state that systematically discriminate against Palestinians and other Indigenous peoples.” We reaffirm this sentiment that recognizes the rights of Indigenous Palestinians when we demand an end to the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and a free Palestine.