My friend, Diane Josephy Peavey, has made several trips to Palestine over the last 20 years. She had it in mind years ago to write a book comparing the plight of the Palestinian Arabs (her hosts were most often Christian Arabs) to that of American Indians. It would have been a way to bring her father’s work on Native American history and culture together with her own. Alvin Josephy was of course my mentor and the namesake of the Josephy Center where I still work.
I thought about Diane and her project as I recently watched President Trump dismiss Gazans’ desires to stay in their homeland against the prospect of nice homes and lives elsewhere. He was reaffirming his project to remove all Gazans and build a new Riviera on the Eastern Mediterranean, and he dismissed the Gazans with a shrug—they’d be fine in Jordan, Egypt, or some other far-off country.
I would invite the President to visit a few Indian Reservations in his own country before settling on this policy. Maybe the Lakotas, hanging on desperately in some hard country, but it is their country. Fighting recently against the incursion of a pipeline they fear will endanger their water.
Or he might visit the two reservations I am more familiar with, the Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho, and the Umatilla Reservation in Oregon.
In 1863, the Nez Perce Reservation was diminished by 90 % from the original homeland granted the Nez Perce by treaty in 1855. The reductio was the result of a gold strike, with more problematic signatories than were on the original treaty. The Nez Perce still today call it the “Liars’ Treaty.” The 10 % was further diminished during the allotment era—1880s-1934—when lands not taken up in allotments were sold off as “surplus” to non-Indians. Yet, now the Nez Perce not only hang onto the remaining lands, but buy back lands sold under allotment as they can. And they fight fiercely to restore fisheries and wild plants and animals to the land.
The Umatilla Reservation in Oregon has its own fraught history with non-Indian intrusion. It too was established in the 1855 treaty-making frenzy in Walla Walla, Washington. And it too was diminished as white settlers took up homesteads and found themselves wanting more land. In 1871, they tried to buy the entire reservation, and move its Tribal members to other reservations—maybe the Nez Pere or Yakima reservations. When it didn’t work, the government legislated the Umatilla Allotment Act—the Slater Act—which reduced the reservation from 520,000 acres to 172,882 acres. This Act served as a model for the later national Allotment, or Dawes Act.
Today, Tribal members and the Tribe itself are buying back their own lands, and taking up the lands let out on leases 100 years ago. There is a vigorous land and water conservation and restoration program, and a thriving casino on Interstate 84 just a few miles from Pendleton. The casino is now neighbored by restaurants, gas station, a major truck repair stop, a new business park, and golf course. There is new housing, a very nice tribal government center, an improved health care facility, and a new charter school. Crow’s Shadow is a wondeful art center which promotes traditional art and exposes Tribal artists to new forms. And, The Tamastslikt Cultural Institute is an Oregon treasure, telling the other story of the Oregon Trail and a well-documented history of the land and the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla peoples who were gathered on this reservation 170 years ago.
So, President Trump, watch the videos of the people storming back to their ruined homes in North Gaza. Listen to the leaders of Egypt and Jordan. Do not listen to Benjamin Netanyahu, who, like you, would like to see all Gazans removed so that Israel could expand across this “new Riviera” that you envision. The people of Gaza want their land, and although a few thousand, maybe tens of thousands, will go elsewhere if coaxed, most of the 1.5 million, like Tribal peoples in our country, will hang onto the shreds of their ancient homelands looking for a day of justice and restoration.
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Diane—this one is for you!