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Inter/Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine
“The age of transnational humanities has arrived.” According to Steven Salaita, the seemingly disparate fields of Palestinian Studies and American Indian Studies have more in common than one may think. In Inter/Nationalism, Salaita argues that American Indian and Indigenous studies must be more central to the scholarship and activism focusing on Palestine.
Salaita offers a fascinating inside account of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement—which, among other things, aims to end Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land. In doing so, he emphasizes BDS’s significant potential as an organizing entity as well as its importance in the creation of intellectual and political communities that put Natives and other colonized peoples such as Palestinians into conversation. His discussion includes readings of a wide range of Native poetry that invokes Palestine as a theme or symbol; the speeches of U.S. President Andrew Jackson and early Zionist thinker Ze’ev Jabotinsky; and the discourses of “shared values” between the United States and Israel.
Inter/Nationalism seeks to lay conceptual ground between American Indian and Indigenous studies and Palestinian studies through concepts of settler colonialism, indigeneity, and state violence. By establishing Palestine as an indigenous nation under colonial occupation, this book draws crucial connections between the scholarship and activism of Indigenous America and Palestine.
Salaita offers a fascinating inside account of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement—which, among other things, aims to end Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land. In doing so, he emphasizes BDS’s significant potential as an organizing entity as well as its importance in the creation of intellectual and political communities that put Natives and other colonized peoples such as Palestinians into conversation. His discussion includes readings of a wide range of Native poetry that invokes Palestine as a theme or symbol; the speeches of U.S. President Andrew Jackson and early Zionist thinker Ze’ev Jabotinsky; and the discourses of “shared values” between the United States and Israel.
Inter/Nationalism seeks to lay conceptual ground between American Indian and Indigenous studies and Palestinian studies through concepts of settler colonialism, indigeneity, and state violence. By establishing Palestine as an indigenous nation under colonial occupation, this book draws crucial connections between the scholarship and activism of Indigenous America and Palestine.
230 pages, Paperback
Published November 15, 2016
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About the author
Steven Salaita
13 books106 followersI teach English at Virginia Tech and write about Arab Americans, Indigenous peoples, race and ethnicity, and literature. I live with my beloved wife, my half-blind bichon frise, and my nutty orange tabby in Blacksburg, Virginia. The little fellow in the picture with me is my son, Ignatius, the fiery one.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 18, 2024
3.5 stars. Overall this was really good and has a lot of valuable information in it, but the writing is so academic that was hard to stay engaged. It's a short book, but so dense so this was a really slow read for me. It's unfortunate that the writing is so inaccessible because there is a lot of important analysis happening connecting Native American and Palestinian history and struggle for decolonization, but this felt like it was geared towards people in grad school studying this- which is fine, just limits the audience.
The book is broken up into 5 parts:
1. How Palestine Became Important to American Indian Studies, 2. Boycotting Israel and Native Nationalism, 3. Ethnic Cleansing as National Uplift, 4. Inter/National Aesthetics: Palestinians in Native Poetry, and 5. Why American Indian Studies Should Be Important to Palestine Solidarity.
To me part 1 and 3 were the most impactful to me, showing the connection between colonization in America/Turtle Island and Palestine. Particularly in showing the similarities between Ze'ev Vladimir Jabotinsky and Andrew Jackson and how both look at the Indigenous people of the land.
"We can talk as much as we want about our good intentions; but [the Palestinians] understand as well as we what is not good for them. They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon Mexico or any Sioux looked upon the prairie. To think the Arabs will voluntarily consent to the realization of Zionism in return for the cultural and economic benefits we can bestow on them is infantile." - Jabotinsky
"For Indigenous people of Turtle Island, supporting the Palestinian struggle is of significance. We know what it is to be denied our right to life by colonizers who could not see our humanity; those who only viewed our bodies as obstacles to possessing the land and its resources. In solidarity, Native Americans work to prevent the loss of Palestinian homelands, because we recognize that what is occurring is not just a loss of land, but an erasure of our knowledge, our history, our ancestors. We must stand up for people under colonial occupation to assert their sovereignty and ream of lives without the ever present fear of death." Erica Violet Lee, Idle No More.
The book is broken up into 5 parts:
1. How Palestine Became Important to American Indian Studies, 2. Boycotting Israel and Native Nationalism, 3. Ethnic Cleansing as National Uplift, 4. Inter/National Aesthetics: Palestinians in Native Poetry, and 5. Why American Indian Studies Should Be Important to Palestine Solidarity.
To me part 1 and 3 were the most impactful to me, showing the connection between colonization in America/Turtle Island and Palestine. Particularly in showing the similarities between Ze'ev Vladimir Jabotinsky and Andrew Jackson and how both look at the Indigenous people of the land.
"We can talk as much as we want about our good intentions; but [the Palestinians] understand as well as we what is not good for them. They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon Mexico or any Sioux looked upon the prairie. To think the Arabs will voluntarily consent to the realization of Zionism in return for the cultural and economic benefits we can bestow on them is infantile." - Jabotinsky
"For Indigenous people of Turtle Island, supporting the Palestinian struggle is of significance. We know what it is to be denied our right to life by colonizers who could not see our humanity; those who only viewed our bodies as obstacles to possessing the land and its resources. In solidarity, Native Americans work to prevent the loss of Palestinian homelands, because we recognize that what is occurring is not just a loss of land, but an erasure of our knowledge, our history, our ancestors. We must stand up for people under colonial occupation to assert their sovereignty and ream of lives without the ever present fear of death." Erica Violet Lee, Idle No More.
July 3, 2017
Important to read, but the writing is not easy. A huge part of the writing problem is the hyperacademic vocabulary and sentence structure, but there's more to it than that.
I wanted to understand why Salaita focuses almost exclusively on the Palestinian experience when talking about Natives. I understand that Indigenous Studies is the link between Indians and Palestinians, and I understand that from that perspective, settler colonialism is--for both--the defining event. But I still don't understand why he doesn't talk about the Native experience outside the frame of the Palestinian experience. For example, in his chapter on comparative literature, he focused only on references to Palestine in contemporary Native poetry. What does this mean? Is it an oversight in that one chapter, or is that what he sees?
I also wanted to know what he considers the end point of BDS (i.e., what specifically needs to happen for it to end). For that question, it was useful to read pp. 42-49, but not as useful as I'd hoped. For example, on the purposes of BDS, he said, "Not all actions need a purpose in the linear sense of the term. And not all purposes are the result of righteous action." I think that by nonlinear he meant that the academic boycott of Israeli universities was not an if-then type of strategy. But I don't know what he meant by purposes that are or are not the result of righteous action.
Because of the writing and reasoning, this book was a hard slog, but it was worth it. And not just because it's an important topic, but because it's important to make every effort to understand.
I wanted to understand why Salaita focuses almost exclusively on the Palestinian experience when talking about Natives. I understand that Indigenous Studies is the link between Indians and Palestinians, and I understand that from that perspective, settler colonialism is--for both--the defining event. But I still don't understand why he doesn't talk about the Native experience outside the frame of the Palestinian experience. For example, in his chapter on comparative literature, he focused only on references to Palestine in contemporary Native poetry. What does this mean? Is it an oversight in that one chapter, or is that what he sees?
I also wanted to know what he considers the end point of BDS (i.e., what specifically needs to happen for it to end). For that question, it was useful to read pp. 42-49, but not as useful as I'd hoped. For example, on the purposes of BDS, he said, "Not all actions need a purpose in the linear sense of the term. And not all purposes are the result of righteous action." I think that by nonlinear he meant that the academic boycott of Israeli universities was not an if-then type of strategy. But I don't know what he meant by purposes that are or are not the result of righteous action.
Because of the writing and reasoning, this book was a hard slog, but it was worth it. And not just because it's an important topic, but because it's important to make every effort to understand.
October 4, 2018
V academic writing but impt discussion of links btw native Americans and Palestinians, and decolonization.
December 20, 2023
partway through this book, Salaita writes that "I have a soft spot for forthrightness." and that is quite the understatement haha. I appreciate a lot of the work here, particularly the big BDS chapter. but also felt like at times the flourish gets ahead of the content - and i might have preferred a more historical vantage point (just picked up Amy Kaplan's Our American Israel, which might veer in that direction).
June 6, 2025
no i hate to be that anarchist liberal arts graduate but thank GOD for intelligent commentary i literally cannot read another stupid journalist thinking they're being cheeky and insightful when they are not making any comments that get at the root of an issue. So first of all i feel REFRESHED. But as for my actual review. This book makes a methodological argument to expand academic analyses by American Indian and Indigenous studies scholars towards Palestine and that the incorporation of Palestine studies into Indigenous studies provides a powerful site for decolonial theorizing and praxis. The material and psychological (! messianic) connections between the United States and Israel bonds their colonialisms disrupting both US and Israeli exceptionalism which opens critical (as in, critical of) analytic avenues. When Israel myths of ahistorical nation-building (which aim to legitimize the state) are rehistoricized, then we appreciate the connection between global colonized groups and lean into inter/national (ha) decolonial organizing. Okay I really learned many things from this book and one that I am sitting with CURRENTLY is that he's like 'not everyone on the north american continent who isn't indigenous is a settler colonist. what about political refugees? decendants of slaves? etc etc. Those aren't settler colonists like the white people selling liquor at the reservation border, but they HAVE AN IMPERATIVE to consider and participate in decolonization because bimch it affects them too' and i was like hmm yems! I am of irish and appalacian ancestry, how does that inform how i will participate in decolonization? Other thingssss that OPENED MY EYES was the explicit consideration of the US as INTERNATIONAL because there LITERALLY are MULTIPLE NATIONS on this continent! like no duh but we don't talk about it that way. ugh the book is across the room so i'm not going to comment on the context that that part was in. another thingggg was um what was it. oh yeah the way that the academy is colonized, like american indian and indigenous studies departments have a lot of admin oversight :( boooo. but that wasn't what i was thinking of. that's okay i can't recall and i don't want to go get the book. I thought that the poetry analysis was quite good as well. There were a lot of good references that I want to read now.
haha okay one more thing. I am so grateful to read a book that is like 'landback is imperative and it will happen. like decolonization will happen, it must' because as it lays out, American colonization is often viewed as something that happenED, past tense, is over and done with, and welllllllll the land is US land nowww and we can't posssssiblyyy give it back!!!!!!! colonization is over and we won! :( sorry about the genocide that was wrong but it's done now! and this book is like '??? colonization is on going, what makes you think you won?' like the last line is something like 'Indigenous people, including Palestinians and American Indians, aren't playing decolonization like a game, but they damn well intend to win.' and it's like lets fucking go.
haha okay one more thing. I am so grateful to read a book that is like 'landback is imperative and it will happen. like decolonization will happen, it must' because as it lays out, American colonization is often viewed as something that happenED, past tense, is over and done with, and welllllllll the land is US land nowww and we can't posssssiblyyy give it back!!!!!!! colonization is over and we won! :( sorry about the genocide that was wrong but it's done now! and this book is like '??? colonization is on going, what makes you think you won?' like the last line is something like 'Indigenous people, including Palestinians and American Indians, aren't playing decolonization like a game, but they damn well intend to win.' and it's like lets fucking go.
February 15, 2021
Ironically given other reviews, I found this book very readable---I'm so used to worse academic prose that this was downright readable.
Like many others, I learned of Salaita through the controversy surrounding his firing over what should have been protected academic speech. As a beneficiary of colonial systems, then, it was only appropriate for me to read what he had to say. And his book does make an incredibly salient case for the analogy of Native American and Palestinian experiences, far beyond the "they're both indigenous" rhetoric that it's so easy to oversimplify to.
In particular, this book links Palestinian and Native American discourses across multiple centuries of history, and with discourses not just in universities but even in places as banal as board games. I hadn't thought about the biblical nature of the North-American-colonial project, nor about how his firing controversy intersected with a university's mascot controversies. Even as far to left as my politics already were, this book is still eye-opening.
Like many others, I learned of Salaita through the controversy surrounding his firing over what should have been protected academic speech. As a beneficiary of colonial systems, then, it was only appropriate for me to read what he had to say. And his book does make an incredibly salient case for the analogy of Native American and Palestinian experiences, far beyond the "they're both indigenous" rhetoric that it's so easy to oversimplify to.
In particular, this book links Palestinian and Native American discourses across multiple centuries of history, and with discourses not just in universities but even in places as banal as board games. I hadn't thought about the biblical nature of the North-American-colonial project, nor about how his firing controversy intersected with a university's mascot controversies. Even as far to left as my politics already were, this book is still eye-opening.
November 15, 2019
So I'm gonna be completely honest here--I know very little about Palestine, and what I do know about Native American land might be more than your average Joe, but nowhere near as comprehensive as I'd like it to be. That being said, I was definitely out of my depth whilst reading this text. I did learn a lot, and it helped me understand just how valuable Indigenous studies is on a global scale, but it was still a couple steps ahead of my understanding about these topics. But hey, I tried something new and interesting, and that's what matters!
And interesting it was, though I'm not sure I'm fully able to give for-sure opinions on this and its content, as I'm definitely not qualified enough for that! On the other hand, it was well-cited and well-sourced, and the tone was certainly appropriate for the topic that Salaita undertook, so as an academic text, it certainly hits all the marks!
Review cross-listed here!
And interesting it was, though I'm not sure I'm fully able to give for-sure opinions on this and its content, as I'm definitely not qualified enough for that! On the other hand, it was well-cited and well-sourced, and the tone was certainly appropriate for the topic that Salaita undertook, so as an academic text, it certainly hits all the marks!
Review cross-listed here!
Want to read
December 8, 2025heard the author interview on the Palestine Pod (highly recommend that podcast as well) : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
would def wanna check out this book
would def wanna check out this book
October 13, 2024
tedious book
It’s not interesting as far as the Indigenous view I have. It’s an academic conversation so if you are not academic, I would not recommend that you read it.
It’s not interesting as far as the Indigenous view I have. It’s an academic conversation so if you are not academic, I would not recommend that you read it.
December 3, 2024
I’ve been trying my hardest to write reviews right after reading books, instead of waiting to collect my thoughts (that ends up never happening lol), so here goes:
Only reason I’ve taken a star off is due for me personally. This was a Harder academic read for me. If you read many hyper-academic writings and can easily get past academic jargon, then this will be a piece of cake read. I understand the need to use this type of language to express certain more nuansed ideas though, and found it important to try to understand as much as I could.
Despite not fully grasping every single concept Salaita explains/examines, I still learned a TON.
The tip of the iceberg of what I learned off the top of my head/analysis i appreciated:
- Israel actively assisted in the training and arming of the Guatemalan govs military in the 1960’s to commit a genocide against their native Mayan population. And has been involved in other Latin American covert activities as well, like in Mexico’s counterinsurgency against the Zapatistas and Chiapas. And basically acts as a very helpful United States proxy for foreign affairs around the world.
- About BDS movement in general, and what it means to participate in the academic boycott of Israel. Used the boycott of 2011 in Arizona as an example of American boycotts
-(I didn’t know about it, Arizona SB 1070 was the the broadest and strictest anti-illegal immigration law, that allowed police to request of anyone they deem a possible undocumented immigrant to show them their papers).
- American troops/military strategists during the War on Terror would sometimes refer to territories in Iraq and Afghanistan as “Indian Country”, as a metaphor for referring to The Enemy’s land
- chapter 3 that did a comparative analysis of the writings of Ze’ev Vladimir Jabotinsky (military strategist and theorist of Zionism, founder of the Irgun militia that committed the 1948 Nakba) vs Andrew Jackson (American president that helped commit the Trail of Tears from 1831-1850)
- The authors own career struggle as a Palestinian who was terminated from his (starting in two weeks time) position as a associate professor in American Indian studies at UIUC, for tweeting tweets critical of Israeli policy, basically. And wow, how that schools mascot is a “Chief”, as in a Native American leader…
- The freedom floatila that went from Italy to the Gaza strip in 2015 to help Palestinians suffering the Israeli siege, had afloat an Algonquin guy “Chief Robert Lovelace”, who gave a speech as a part of their mission statement:
“Colonialism is a worldwide scourge. It has been going on for hundreds of years. And the outcomes are now hitting really full force: the poverty, the displaced people, the migrants. It’s time for all aboriginal people to stand up and to recognise that our liberation, our freedom and our justice are tied together with all the peoples in the world who are oppressed, whether they live in Mexico, or Latin America, the United States, or in Africa or in the Middle East or in the Far East.”
Only reason I’ve taken a star off is due for me personally. This was a Harder academic read for me. If you read many hyper-academic writings and can easily get past academic jargon, then this will be a piece of cake read. I understand the need to use this type of language to express certain more nuansed ideas though, and found it important to try to understand as much as I could.
Despite not fully grasping every single concept Salaita explains/examines, I still learned a TON.
The tip of the iceberg of what I learned off the top of my head/analysis i appreciated:
- Israel actively assisted in the training and arming of the Guatemalan govs military in the 1960’s to commit a genocide against their native Mayan population. And has been involved in other Latin American covert activities as well, like in Mexico’s counterinsurgency against the Zapatistas and Chiapas. And basically acts as a very helpful United States proxy for foreign affairs around the world.
- About BDS movement in general, and what it means to participate in the academic boycott of Israel. Used the boycott of 2011 in Arizona as an example of American boycotts
-(I didn’t know about it, Arizona SB 1070 was the the broadest and strictest anti-illegal immigration law, that allowed police to request of anyone they deem a possible undocumented immigrant to show them their papers).
- American troops/military strategists during the War on Terror would sometimes refer to territories in Iraq and Afghanistan as “Indian Country”, as a metaphor for referring to The Enemy’s land
- chapter 3 that did a comparative analysis of the writings of Ze’ev Vladimir Jabotinsky (military strategist and theorist of Zionism, founder of the Irgun militia that committed the 1948 Nakba) vs Andrew Jackson (American president that helped commit the Trail of Tears from 1831-1850)
- The authors own career struggle as a Palestinian who was terminated from his (starting in two weeks time) position as a associate professor in American Indian studies at UIUC, for tweeting tweets critical of Israeli policy, basically. And wow, how that schools mascot is a “Chief”, as in a Native American leader…
- The freedom floatila that went from Italy to the Gaza strip in 2015 to help Palestinians suffering the Israeli siege, had afloat an Algonquin guy “Chief Robert Lovelace”, who gave a speech as a part of their mission statement:
“Colonialism is a worldwide scourge. It has been going on for hundreds of years. And the outcomes are now hitting really full force: the poverty, the displaced people, the migrants. It’s time for all aboriginal people to stand up and to recognise that our liberation, our freedom and our justice are tied together with all the peoples in the world who are oppressed, whether they live in Mexico, or Latin America, the United States, or in Africa or in the Middle East or in the Far East.”
December 31, 2021
Interesting read but not an easy one to get through. As with a lot of academic writing, I found it so compelling at the beginning but found the further I got into the less engaged I felt.
Though this book deals with the idea of decolonization and the impact that would have for both Native America and Palestine, I found the connection between the two not as strong as I'd like (though there is no denying that the US has played a huge role in the colonization of the Palestine).
I would dive into this again and reexplore it in relation to some other work.
Though this book deals with the idea of decolonization and the impact that would have for both Native America and Palestine, I found the connection between the two not as strong as I'd like (though there is no denying that the US has played a huge role in the colonization of the Palestine).
I would dive into this again and reexplore it in relation to some other work.
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