The Unbroken Thread: Inter/Nationalism, Decolonization, and the Shared Struggle for Native America and Palestine
Why do the fight for justice in one corner of the world often echo in another, thousands of miles away? It’s a question that haunts activists, scholars, and everyday people who refuse to look away when they see oppression. That said, the struggles of Native American communities in the United States and Palestinian people under occupation are not isolated tragedies. They are two chapters of the same unfinished story—one of resistance, of solidarity, and of the relentless push to decolonize lands that were never truly theirs to hold.
This isn’t about false equivalencies or shallow comparisons. Which means it’s about recognizing patterns. It’s about understanding how systems of colonialism operate similarly across time and space—and how movements for liberation can learn from one another. At its core, this is a story about inter/nationalism: the idea that justice isn’t just local, but global; that freedom for one people demands freedom for others.
What Is Inter/Nationalism in the Context of Decolonization?
Let’s start with the basics. Decolonization isn’t just a historical event—it’s an ongoing process. It’s the dismantling of colonial structures that still govern how land is owned, how resources are extracted, and whose voices are centered in policy. But for Native American nations, this means reclaiming sovereignty over tribal lands, protecting sacred sites from pipelines and mining, and restoring treaty rights that were violated centuries ago. For Palestinians, it means ending military occupation, halting illegal settlements, and achieving the right of return for displaced families.
Inter/nationalism bridges the gap between these local struggles and global solidarity. and Israel are both settler-colonial states, built on the displacement of indigenous populations. Think about it: s. The U.Consider this: it’s the recognition that colonialism didn’t end with the formal dissolution of empires—it evolved. Their governments, their militaries, their legal frameworks all operate on similar principles: land acquisition through force, erasure of native identities, and the imposition of foreign laws over traditional ways of life.
So when we talk about decolonizing in this context, we’re not just asking for policy changes. We’re asking for a complete restructuring—one that returns power to the people who were here first, and who have never stopped fighting for their rights.
Some disagree here. Fair enough Small thing, real impact..
Why It Matters: The Weight of Historical Injustice
To understand why inter/nationalism matters, you have to sit with the weight of history. S. In North America, the Doctrine of Discovery—endorsed by the Catholic Church and later codified by the U.Supreme Court—gave European settlers the legal right to claim indigenous land. Over 500 years, this doctrine enabled the forced removal of millions of Native people, from the Trail of Tears to the reservation system that confines many to some of the poorest land in the country Simple, but easy to overlook..
In Palestine, the story is similarly brutal. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 promised a “national home” for Jewish immigrants in a land already home to an Arab majority. Now, decades of violence followed: the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” which saw the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948, and the continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza since 1967. Today, Palestinian children are taught in schools that lack basic resources, while Israeli settlements expand on stolen land—all under the watchful eye of international law that’s often ignored.
What connects these two stories? Worth adding: the belief that one group has a divine or historical right to the land, and that the indigenous population is either expendable or irrelevant. Both struggles are about more than territory—they’re about dignity, identity, and the right to exist without fear.
And here’s where inter/nationalism steps in. When Native activists in Standing Rock stood in solidarity with Palestinian farmers facing displacement, they weren’t making
a symbolic gesture—they were asserting a shared analysis. Now, they understood that the same corporate interests, the same militarized policing, and the same colonial logic that built the Dakota Access Pipeline were the ones bulldozing olive groves in the West Bank. Solidarity becomes a strategy: by linking struggles, movements dilute the divide-and-conquer tactics that have kept oppressed peoples isolated and politically weak.
This interconnected framework also challenges the mainstream human rights industry, which too often treats violations as isolated incidents requiring neutral mediation. Inter/nationalism rejects neutrality. Even so, it names the structure—settler colonialism—as the perpetrator, and it demands that accountability be transnational. A court ruling in The Hague means little if the U.S. But continues to arm the occupation; a land acknowledgment in Canada means nothing if resource extraction on indigenous territory remains state-sponsored. The struggle has to be fought on every front at once: legal, cultural, economic, and armed where necessary for defense.
Crucially, inter/nationalism is not about erasing difference. A Navajo organizer does not need to become Palestinian, nor does a Palestinian refugee need to adopt Native ceremony. Which means what they share is the refusal to let empire define the limits of their humanity. And their alliances are built on mutual aid, not assimilation. They trade tactics—blockades, boycotts, testimony—and they protect each other’s narratives from the distortion of colonial archives.
The work is unfinished, and it is dangerous. Leaders are criminalized, borders are weaponized, and the language of terrorism is deployed to silence those who name the violence plainly. But the continuity of these movements proves something the colonizer cannot extinguish: that the displaced are not gone, and the occupied are not defeated.
It's the bit that actually matters in practice.
In the end, inter/nationalism is not a slogan but a practice of liberation. It insists that no struggle for land and life is separate from another, and that justice for one is bound to justice for all. Until the last settler structure is dismantled—until the return, the restitution, and the repair are made real—the bridge between peoples will remain the only honest map we have It's one of those things that adds up..
The work is ongoing, a labor of love and resistance that refuses to be bounded by borders or silenced by rhetoric. In practice, inter/nationalism shows up in the daily decisions of activists: a farmer in the West Bank sending seed packets to a Navajo rancher; a Canadian Indigenous council co‑drafting a resolution with the Palestinian Authority on the right to water; a coalition of Black, Indigenous, and Palestinian women establishing a shared fund to support community‑run health clinics that operate outside of corporate and state control. These are not grand gestures; they are the small, tangible stitches that keep the larger tapestry from unraveling.
Honestly, this part trips people up more than it should.
Digital platforms have amplified the reach of this solidarity. Yet the power of the internet is double‑edged; surveillance and misinformation threaten to distort the narrative. Here's the thing — hashtag movements that begin in one jurisdiction can quickly gain traction in another, as seen when the “#StopThePipeline” chant found its echo in the “#FreePalestine” forums. That is why inter/nationalist networks invest in secure communication, training in digital literacy, and the creation of open‑source archives that resist the erasure of history by colonial archives Nothing fancy..
Legally, inter/nationalism demands a re‑imagining of accountability. And it calls for transnational courts that can hear cases where a corporation in one country finances an occupation in another. It pushes for the inclusion of indigenous and occupied peoples as legitimate subjects in international law, not merely as victims. The 2023 UN report on “Settler Colonialism and Climate Change” is a step in that direction, but it must be followed by incidents of reparative justice: land restitution, recognition of treaty rights, and the dismantling of corporate monopolies that perpetuate dependency.
Economically, the movement encourages solidarity buying—supporting businesses that are owned and operated by the communities they serve. Boycotts, if conducted Daarbij, with an eye toward ensuring that the economic impact is felt by those who profit from oppression, can cripple the financial engine of colonial projects. The “Buy Indigenous” campaigns that have seen a surge in the last decade are a testament to how collective consumer power can be redirected toward resistance Simple as that..
Culturally, inter/nationalism shines a light on the shared histories that colonial narratives have tried to erase. Oral histories, songs, and stories are exchanged across borders, creating a shared memory that is both a source of strength and a tool for education. The recent collaboration between a Māori iwi and a Palestinian collective to produce a bilingual anthology of resistance poems is a case in point—an act that affirms identity while building bridges Easy to understand, harder to ignore..
In the end, the promise of inter/nationalism lies not in a single grand treaty or a definitive legal victory, but in the persistent, everyday acts of solidarity that weave a network of mutual support. That said, it is a practice that resists the logic of isolation and embraces the reality that oppression is a global, systemic phenomenon. The bridge between peoples, once built, does not merely connect; it becomes a platform from which all can ascend toward a world where land, culture, and humanity are no longer commodities of the powerful butೃದ the rightful inheritance of all.
Until the last settler structure is dismantled—until the return, the restitution, and the repair are made real—the bridge between peoples will remain the only honest map we have. It is on that map that the next steps must be drawn: by those who will walk it together, knowing that their paths converge in the shared horizon of liberation Surprisingly effective..
