National Post: 50,000 March for Israel
Among the tens of thousands who participated in the recent walk with Israel event in Toronto on Sunday was a group of Indigenous supporters, some of whom had travelled halfway around the planet to stand in solidarity with their Jewish Canadian friends and colleagues.
Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem is a project of Indigenous Coalition for Israel, a global group of First Nations people lending their voices in support of Israel and its people.
Dr. Sheree Trotter, co-director of Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem, spoke to the National Post from Toronto, where she had travelled to participate in Sunday’s march alongside co-director the Honourable Alfred Ngaro. A Maori and historian with a PhD from the University of Auckland, Trotter also co-founded the Indigenous Coalition for Israel in 2021.
“I was worried about the pro-Palestinian voices among Maoris,” she explains. “I was concerned about the way the Indigenous voice was being aligned. A lot of it was based on a false narrative.”
Put simply, Trotter does not believe that Jews are a colonial, occupying force in Israel, as some have positioned them to be. “They have more than a three and a half thousand year connection with the land,” she says. “Their ancestors have lived there since time immemorial.”
As such, she and others see Jewish Israelis as Indigenous people, similar to the way Maoris in New Zealand or the various First Nations in Canada and the United States are recognized as Indigenous.
“There is no universally recognized definition of Indigeneity,” Trotter wrote in an article titled A Light for Indigenous Nations. “However, a number of criteria … are generally accepted: self-identification, historical continuity with pre-colonial and/or pre-settler societies; strong links to territories and surrounding natural resources; distinct social, economic, or political systems; distinct language, culture, and beliefs; form non-dominant groups of society; resolve to maintain and reproduce their ancestral environments and systems as distinct communities.”