Roberto Hernandez - Indigenous Solidarity with Palestine (2020)

Iskander: Okay, . For our viewers in South Africa and for folks in many other places of the world, my name is Iskander and I am an activist volunteer with Africa for Palestine. You are joining us tonight or today for our webinar with Professor Roberto Hernandez on the topic of indigenous Palestinian solidarity. For those of us who may not be familiar with Africa for Palestine, we are a nonprofit organization, NGO, focusing on strengthening African-Palestinian relations and pushing back against apartheid Israel's infiltration and influence into the continent of Africa. We work with solidarity groups, trade unions, political formations, and human rights organizations across the African continent who have our same spirit of progressive internationalism and commitment to standing with other oppressed peoples of the world. Tonight, we are very privileged and honored to have Professor Roberto Hernandez, who is an associate professor at San Diego State University in San Diego, California in the United States. And Professor Hernandez is an actively engaged community-based researcher, scholar, teacher, and writer. His publications and teaching focus on the intersections of colonial and border violence, the geopolitics of knowledge, and cultural production, decolonial political theory, social movements, hemispheric indigeneity, masculinity, and comparative border studies. Welcome, Professor Oprofe Hernandez. How are you?

Roberto Hernandez: Good morning or good evening, wherever it is that you may be tuning in from. Greetings from Kumeyaay Territory, where I'm located in the San Diego-Tijuana border. Thanks for having me. Good to see you.

Iskander: Same here, Prof. Hernandez. We're very privileged to have you. As an organization, Africa for Palestine really looks forward to our discussion tonight, but I also personally look forward um uh to to to uh to this webinar today um uh professor hernandez and myself uh work on some some summer schools together um and uh it's always a pleasure to to be learning from from profane uh from professor hernandez so um if uh if we can let's get started uh with some questions uh so first up uh professor hernandez Our topic tonight is indigenous Palestinian solidarity. Now you are a scholar activist coming from a indigenous background in addition to your work and your activism focusing with that issue and in Palestine solidarity. For our viewers, can you share with us just a bit more about the scholarly and activist work you do in general? And more specifically in relation to Palestine?

Roberto Hernandez: Yeah, so part of how it connects, if you will, I'll begin by mentioning just a little bit biographically. I'm in San Diego, which is people often refer to San Diego as the San Diego-Tijuana border region. But more specifically, I grew up in San Isidro, which is really South San Diego. It's as far south as you can get. I don't like the name San Diego, Tijuana, because San Diego is much larger city, extends to the north, extends to the east. So when I talk about the border, I talk about San Isidro, Tijuana. And I grew up in San Isidro, probably about a good 10 blocks from the actual border wall. So growing up along the border wall, constantly dealing with border patrol, not to mention as, you know, being in from working class neighborhood, constant police, and so on. But on top of the police, also border patrol. And being that, you know, as a Chicano, Mexicano, we move across the border to visit family in Mexico a lot. So it's a trans-border region, but we're daily faced with the idea of having to cross that border going through checkpoints, dealing with harassment. And since 94 in particular, it predates, you know, the US-Mexico border increasingly militarized, being a militarized zone. So it's in that context that when I was burning up in San Ysidro, I often point to a massacre that happened just down the street from my house at a McDonald's. And at that massacre, the white supremacists often spoken of as the first of these many random shootings that now happen so regularly here in the U.S. If one thing that's good about the whole pandemic is that it stopped some of the mass shootings we're having regularly. But in that instance, it's considered one of the first ones in 1984, as white supremacists went to McDonald's, told his wife, I'll be back, I'm going to hunt some Mexicans. killed 21, injured another 18. And of those killed, it included even some of my childhood friends that were there that day. So for me, it began to raise a lot of questions. On the one hand, the border patrol hunting us down, hunting people who look like me down. On the other hand, here you have a civilian quite literally hunting us down. So the combination of the growing up, you know, alongside the border wall, the combination of the McDonald's massacre in 84 started raising a lot of questions for me as a young kid about the relationship between the border, the massacre and so on. By 1992, I was only a teenager, but one of the very first protests I attended was actually against the quintennial. While Spain, Italy, Portugal were fighting each other over who could properly claim the legacy of Columbus for indigenous peoples, not only in the US, but throughout the Americas, there was definitely a lot of movement, a lot of activity even prior to 92 about what are we going to do around the quintentennial? There's nothing to celebrate. Instead, how do we demarcate 500 years of resistance, 500 years of resilience. In San Diego, that took on a protest that did not go to Little Italy, did not go to a local park here that's called Discovery Park, where there's a Columbus statue. Here in San Diego, it was 5,000 people marched on the actual US-Mexico border in San Isidro. So this was one of my first protests. And And so for us, it was almost instinctively in our gut, we knew this type of protest, even though there's a Columbus statue down the road, has to happen at the border because everything about nation state borders is intricately tied to Columbus and the so-called discovery and the colonization that ensues. So we went there, we went to the border, like I said, 5,000 people and myself at this point only about 13 years old, but it kind of begins to mark this trajectory, right? I'm constantly doing stuff around issues of border violence, not just like physical in an activist sense. Lately, the last couple of years with the caravan, we worked here with folks in detention centers. So we do that migrant rights work, but at the same time, being shaped by the border as my life has been, when I look to Palestine, when I look to the checkpoints, when I look to the militarization of occupation, for me, it was also a no brainer. Like, you know, I stand with those who are being impinged upon by the same border militarization, same violence that is rooted ultimately in the colonial enterprise that is set in motion in 1492. I know you and I have talked about the 1492 as the first Nakba in some ways. The spiritual manifestation of the attempt to take back Jerusalem is front and center in that moment of 1492 in that city in Granada that we both hold so dear. For me, the parallels obviously different intensities. No one here is trying to compare one with the other as if they're equals, but there are forms of violence and genocide that are rooted in the same logics, in the same colonial logics. And so for me, it became very natural when doing the work on border violence in this Mexico border to think not just about this as one side, but what some might call comparative border studies and how the perspective of thinking about coloniality All these borders are ultimately colonial borders. The way the African continent is compartmentalized into these nation-state units. We just had the anniversary of the Berlin Conference in totally a colonial act. And the area today known as the Middle East or Palestine in particular, and to be known as Israel, this is all this compartmentalization of these lines in the sand that when you're flying over a plane, you know, no one can see yet. They're so real and have very real consequences for people. So this is how my scholarly work and my more activist work have kind of come together in terms of quite literally how do we undo borders? How do we create a world marked by these national territorial borders.

Iskander: Sure. Sure, thank you, Professor Roberto. I mean, I think that's very helpful for us to help understand how, I mean, literally you come from a community that I think as the saying goes down there, we didn't cross the borders, the borders crossed us. And it's something that's inspired you to fight for justice in relation to colonialism, not only for your community, but many other communities, including Palestine. Before jumping a bit into some of the history of indigenous struggle and its relationship to Palestinian struggle, I just want to ask two quick questions. If you could possibly just briefly share a little bit of the activism you've been involved with specifically for Palestine. um if i'm not mistaken you have been involved for a while in palestinian solidarity um and uh for many of us myself included um who are a bit younger um we're not always aware of of the history of of this joint struggle happening um you know before our time um and and secondly you have a really really beautiful background behind you i mean it looks very real so if you could just quickly share with us uh what's going on there

Roberto Hernandez: Yeah, I mean, and ultimately they're related, right? Since that the starting point or kind of point of departure of sources was what you mentioned. We didn't cross the borders, the borders crossed us. So that is a very common slogan, if you will, that we say around here. Myself, I'm currently in Kumeyaay territory, which is not my people's. My people's come from Mexico, from down South with Adica and Mam, respectively, my mother and my father's side. But the Kumeyaay, where I'm at, quite literally the original territories extend into far north of San Diego and south into Mexico. So the Kumeyaay quite literally got split by the border. You got part of the people on the U.S. side and part of the people on the Mexican side now. And if you go up and down the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S.-Canadian border, and for that matter, most national territorial borders, You have original peoples indigenous peoples who have been split by these borders, so I mentioned, I started with the massacre and and growing up in the border, because by the time I went to my undergrad up at Berkeley. You know, it was triggering, you know, both research questions that I started to take on as an undergrad even, but also a lot of the activist work. And so I was doing a lot of work. I got to Berkeley fall 97 and we started.

Iskander: University of California, Berkeley. That's in Northern California, correct?

Roberto Hernandez: Yes. So I'm in San Diego, but I went up towards San Francisco, Northern California, across the Bay, Oakland, Berkeley. And when I first got there, you know, having grown up on the border here, the lines were very drawn, right? It's like you're either brown or you're white. And usually it was a border patrol's white and they chased brown people, right? But I get to Berkeley and it's a much more diverse, multicultural, all kinds of folks from everywhere, you know? And so, you know, we started doing work, not just focused on Chicano indigenous issues, but also a lot of multiracial solidarity work. And it's in that context that I started meeting a lot of Palestinian comrades, first through what we called the Third World College, where we did this encampment, where it's related to the history of ethnic studies in the US. I'm a professor of Chicana and Chicano studies. And sometimes I have to explain how and what that means, right? These are departments, Black studies, Chicano studies, ethnic studies, American Indian studies, that came out of struggle, that came out of struggles of the 60s. And they're not departments that the university just created, gave us top down, but rather that they emerged out of student strikes. And so those strikes at San Francisco State first, and then at Berkeley in 68, 69, 70, went by the name of the Third World Liberation Front and the Third World Strike, calling for a third world college. At San Francisco State, they got an ethnic college of ethnic studies now. Berkeley, it's a little bit messier history. But nevertheless, by the 90s, we were still fighting for the college. We had departments, but we didn't have full college status. And so it was in that context that we started doing this third world college. We did a strike in 99 facing budget cuts for retirements of professors that were not getting New professors we hired, they're trying to starve out our departments. We again took on another long strike. We took the name TWLF and named ourselves that in 99 and took on a protracted struggle that lasted a whole semester, culminated in a hunger strike that ultimately led to a victory, partial, but nevertheless a victory. where we got eight faculty hires, a new research center, among other things. But it's in that context that I started engaging with a lot of the Palestinian comrades. And so the real trigger for me, even though there was more solidarity work, where I jumped, you could say, more full in was after 9-11. Immediately after 9-11, probably within 10 days, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, Lavaughan Jenkins, Ph.D.: For your summer September 19 September 21 something like that our campus newspaper published a really racist statement cartoon about you know the figure the Muslim terrorists and so on, and we had a lot of students from some students, the msa and. and the beginnings of SSJP that they took over the newspaper offices of our campus. And for many of us that had been working with these folks, they eventually were told, if you don't leave by midnight, we're locked in the building and at that point is considered trespassing and you're subject to arrest. For many of us that were present that day, we looked around at each other and we said, we told our Muslim relatives, we love you, we're not letting you get arrested, we'll take this one. And we made it a point to make sure, because it was so shortly after 9-11, because people were being arrested and disappeared, that we didn't know what would happen to them if they were arrested. So we said, we got this. And maybe it was about 21 of us that took arrest, but within 10 days after 9-11, in support of these comrades. Uh, so that that's all 2001. Um, after that, you know, I'm, I'm fully in with MSA with, uh, students for justice of Palestine, the beginnings of what becomes the BDS campaign. And in April of 2002, uh, some might recognize the, the, the day, right. Some, uh, anniversary of the massacre diary I seen, uh, every year. and Palestinian students had been doing a commemoration of the massacre. And it just so happened that in 2002, it coincided with a different calendar, Holocaust Remembrance Day. And so it became a very contentious compared to previous anniversaries of Dari Yassin, very contentious day in that some of the Zionist students on campus tried to discredit and dismiss the massacre of Darya Sein, saying that the real purpose of that rally and commemoration that day was to basically counter Holocaust Remembrance Day, that somehow what Students for Justice in Palestine was interested in doing was tainting the memory of those who were killed at the Holocaust. when it had nothing to do with that. It was the annual celebration or commemoration of the massacre Dari Yassin. Out of this rally, which again was building up as a very contentious day, potential arguments that were leading to potential fights with some scientists students on the quad there at Berkeley, the rally ends, marches around campus, and it culminates in a building takeover. I actually am one of the people who stayed behind to make sure there was no fights to calm some of the arguments that were happening. Eventually, I get a call. Because I had been involved in a lot of different student organizing, a lot of civil disobedience, I get a call from my sister, who was also a student at Berkeley at the time. And she tells me, hey, man, they just took over a building over here. They're calling, they're wanting me to call you to see if you could come help give a civil disobedience training. So I wasn't even part of the original occupation, but I went and joined the occupation. I gave the training, you know, in terms of what to do, what not to do. If you have parole, probation, immigration issues, you know, thank you for your willingness, but we're not going to let you get arrested. And as I was finishing up this training, I even joke with friends today that, you know, as folks were chanting, hell no, we won't go. I was chanting, hell no, they won't go, right? I was on my way out the door. I did my training. I was getting out of there. But as I was trying to leave, I looked back and there was over 80 people. If I'm not mistaken, this was probably one of the first mass arrests post 9-11, aside from the 20 of us previously. It was close to 80 people and a full quarter of the people there, at least a good 20 folks of the people there, were all young Chicanas and Chicanos like myself, who I had been mentoring. And so I couldn't leave. I could not leave behind, not just the 80 people as a whole, but more specifically, those younger folks that I had been working with for the previous years. So I decided to stay. And in the end, because of my continued militancy over the previous years, I ended up getting singled out, singled out for additional charges. 79 people were arrested. 78 were cited and released. I was put in a cell facing charges of assault and battery on an officer that, and this dragged out for a year long legal battle. In its own case, my bachelor's was being withheld. I couldn't start a PhD, a bunch of stuff. But at the end of the day, right, that, was the price one pays for standing up for Palestine. And so it only solidified my conviction to be with my comrades, right? Because ultimately it was like, let's not let this turn into just the legal defense of a few. We need to keep the issue of Palestine front and center. And so, yeah, I think that ultimately is what brought it together. But just to mention briefly the center behind me, is part of those same struggles in the 60s and 70s, where not only did we take over spaces in the university, but we also took over, this was an abandoned water tower in a large park here in San Diego, Boboa Park, kind of like the equivalent of Central Park in New York. And within the complex of the park, you know, activists here took over a different building, insisting that our community have a cultural art space within the broader Buffalo Park. Of course, the building that was taken over in September of 1970 was a much nicer, bigger building, but the city said, well, we got this water tank. And as we do, we work with what we got and we converted this water tank into a beautiful cultural art space that to this day is all volunteer run. I'm one of the current board members. I work there, you know, half my time is practically a second job. But it speaks to the fact that for many of us, resistance of political struggle has always been also tied to cultural struggle, that the very public presentation of our culture in itself in this context of a white white supremacist settler colonial state the very presence visibility of our culture itself has been an act of resistance and nowadays 50 years removed the second year is actually the anniversary a lot of people sometimes just take art and culture for granted but for for colonized peoples it has been part and parcel of our struggle, part and parcel of making our presence, our visibility known. At San Francisco State Ethnic Studies, there was a controversy over a mural, much like the ones you see behind me, because there, DUBS, General Union of Palestinian Students, wanted to put up a mural that depicted, among other people, Edward Said. And there was a big struggle around that at the time when I was also in the Bay Area. So in many ways, all these things come full circle to struggle ultimately and resistance.

Iskander: Sure. Professor Hernandez, you've shared some very moving stories about your commitment to the Palestine solidarity struggle, some very real serious moments in your activist life as a You had me at a loss for words at a moment, because as a Palestinian, I didn't have the privilege of being with you there that day when you were arrested in Berkeley. But I have had the privilege of seeing a picture from that day of you getting arrested, this seemingly very brave courageous activist with his hands behind his back the police behind him and the shirt I think is kind of ripped off or torn to the side and there's a bit of blood coming from the side of your face from being in a scuffle, I think, with the police or during the protests. And you just made me think of a very common slogan that we hear in protests in Palestine, but also everywhere, that there is a Palestine Solidarity Movement, and it's in Arabic, and it goes, Which means, by spirit, by blood, we will redeem you, O Aqsa, Masjid al-Aqsa in Jerusalem. By spirit, by blood, we will redeem you, O Aqsa, Masjid al-Aqsa. So I just, I really want to thank you for your commitment, comrade Profe, to the struggle for your spirit and for your blood. I think it's an inspiration for many of us.

Roberto Hernandez: If I may, just super briefly, as beautifully as you put those words you just shared, I have to say that that picture was actually from a different arrest.

Iskander: Oh, gosh.

Roberto Hernandez: Unfortunately, that was during riots that ensued following the police murder of Oscar Grant in Oakland, California. January 1st of 2009, which at some point in the midst of the protests after that killing, I got grabbed by an officer and thrown into a light post, which is why you have the blood coming down the side and eventually arrested. But in terms of Other photos that are out there of the Palestinian protests of April 9, 2002, I have to share this story because ultimately the reason why they charged me for assault and battery is that while we were sitting with locked arms and police were trying to rip one person from the next and so on, they were using pressure pain holes behind one's ears in the jock to squeeze, to get people to release their arms and take them. But even as we were being gripped with these pain holes, we kept our chant strong. And it was in pain that I was still chanting viva, viva, palestina, viva, viva, intifada, that they claimed that what I was doing was really trying to lunge at them and bite them. And I said, haram, I don't need work. The charge itself was that I bit the officer, when in reality, it was the chanting while being subjected to these pain holes, that they said I was biting and lunging at them when for us it was the spirit to maintain that spirit strong even as we were facing arrest in terms of our stance for Palestine.

Iskander: Thank you for the correction on the picture. But I think the feeling still stands that you have given in spirit and I think in blood to the cause. And we deeply appreciate it, Prophet Hernandez. If I can move on to back to the topic for today in terms of history. Over in the USA, most of the country has just celebrated the yearly holiday known as Thanksgiving just a few days ago on Thursday. This holiday, for people who may not know about it, has been critiqued. by indigenous people for its erasure of the genocide and ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples by European settlers in what is now called the United States. Can you just briefly share with us? I mean, I know it's difficult, especially as a scholar of this history as well. Can you briefly share with us a history of the indigenous struggle in the United States?

Roberto Hernandez: Yeah, I mean, I think part of why Thanksgiving in particular, we refer to it as Thanksgiving or No Thanks Day. Why it's such a contested holiday goes back to this question of culture and symbols. Part of how the US as a settler state manages to effectuate the erasure of indigenous people is to create this narrative of, well, we came and we feasted together, everybody was happy. and sharing food, sharing turkey, what have you, when the reality is, like, these are settlers who were starving and practically dying, and Native peoples received them with open arms, unfortunately, to their detriment, you know, because from the East Coast all the way to the Pacific Coast, time and again, settlers would prove themselves settlers, right? would try to take land and kill and maim and ultimately erase. But the key point is that despite all their efforts, we're still here. And it varies from territory to territory. Some peoples weren't as lucky and had much more of a genocide. Others fought, rebelled, ran, hit, you know, did whatever they could to maintain their languages or traditions themselves as a people, right? And so this is a process pretty much across the U.S., right, to varying degrees with different people. Some Indigenous peoples, you know, can no longer count on any living people, but many others despite the U.S. narrative, you know, that Indigenous people are something of the past, right? One of the founding mythologies of the United States is quite literally like Indigenous people are either dead or dying, meaning they're dead, they're in the past, they're no longer here, or dying, there's so few of them left that it doesn't matter, so it's not a big deal anyways. And so when ethnic studies was created, when American Indian studies was created, it was combating one of the main tasks, I would say, the initial task was combating this myth of dead or dying. And it's instead demonstrating that despite violence, despite colonization, despite, in some people's cases, we're still here, right? And now that history varies in Mexico or in other places in Latin America, where instead of the, you know, what we call in the US is more settler colonial, right? Which is to vanish and replace. In Latin America, I would say colonialism plays out differently in that many of the Spanish colonizers integrated much more with native populations although still maintaining racialized hierarchies of blood and separation and degrees of Spaniardness, degrees of whiteness, and so on. So it's a much more complicated picture. But whether it be the US or in America, a lot of Indigenous peoples are very mixed nowadays. But the point is we're still Indigenous peoples, however mixed. Colonialism happened. We can't deny that. And so I think that's where a lot of these things coincide in terms of why the center and the back, but also it gets to a story I'll share with you perhaps in some of the other questions around. I think I may have mentioned this to you before when Amita Haas, a respected journalist from Caretz, anti-Sinus in her own right, came to San Diego a jewish israeli uh journalist correct yes uh came to san diego and wanted to find the indigenous people who were in solidarity with palestine but but i think i'll get to that a little later because in terms of again the going back to uh thanksgiving right long story short that's why we refer to it as thanks taking right it's ultimately the result of these processes of our givingness was the taking of land.

Iskander: I think you've shared with us, and for those of us who are joining this webinar a bit later, we are here tonight, at least tonight in South Africa, with Professor Roberto Hernandez, who is a scholar activist at the University of San Diego in the United States. Sorry, University of California. San Diego State University. There's three different ones here. San Diego State University. Okay, I haven't been home for a while. San Diego State University in the United States, and we are here on the topic of indigenous Palestinian solidarity. Professor Hernandez has shared with us a good amount about his his journey in indigenous struggle and in solidarity in the Palestinian solidarity struggle and a bit about the history. In many ways, he shared the kind of broad connections between the colonization of Palestine being linked to the colonization of many indigenous peoples all across the Americas and specifically in the United States, kind of the figure of Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492, so to speak. And the connection, I mean, coming to 1948 with the kind of final colonization of Palestine and what's known to Palestinians as the Nakba or the great catastrophe being a type of similar Nakba that many indigenous peoples have experienced in the Americas and in the United States. but to just go a little bit more specific into this history of solidarity or at least shared points of struggle. Professor Hernandez, can you share with us a bit this history of joint struggle between indigenous peoples and Palestinians and or the kind of connections that they just default kind of are always meeting together and seem to be fighting similar battles, even though it's not always explicit.

Roberto Hernandez: Yeah, and I appreciate that you properly situated 1948, right, and what happens following not just the creation of the entity to be known as Israel, but more specifically in this, you know, Despite the white hairs, I'm not that old, so I wasn't there necessarily myself in the 60s, but a lot of my own mentors and elders have shared stories with me of the 60s more broadly and the broader, you know, some might say the global revolution of 1968, the movements that are playing out. even prior to early 60s and so on, but 1967 as marking an important turning point that even amongst some colonized peoples in struggle in the West, there was still this romantic idea from 48 about the kibbutz and the possibility of socialist communes this emerging territory that obviously is not emerging. There's already people there. But nevertheless, by 1967 and the 67 war, all pretensions to any socialist utopia represented by these kibbutz went away. And that year really marked a rift, a turning point, in terms of what you could broadly call the U.S. left, in terms of those who still maintained a position, a more explicitly Zionist position, and those for whom those pretensions of the possibility of something good happening there went away. And so this gets marked as well within the struggles here, not just the African-American struggle, but also indigenous struggles and so on, In that, you know, you get the emergence of these soft scientists making apologies or being apologists for Israel. But for those who continued their commitments to anti-colonial struggle, the lines were drawn and it was very clear. And we stand with Palestinian people. So 67 is what a lot of my own elders have really pointed to as making that division clear for especially a struggle happening from the perspective of the US so far away, right? That after 67, you had to make a choice. And in the US context, you know, If we look even at the history of civil rights movement, there's a lot of talk about Black Jewish solidarity, Black Jewish coalitions that just mysteriously fell apart following 68. And they blame it on Black people becoming more militant and kicking out Jewish folks. But the reality is that that Black Jewish solidarity fell apart after the 67 Moore. And it was because those Blacks that had a more militant radical politics said, we're not going to deal with you if you're going to be supporting the settler colonial state that is killing Palestinians. That's where that divide happens. And same thing for American Indian movement. you know, who decide following 67 to maintain their, their solidarities with, uh, Palestine, uh, to the point that even, you know, in the late seventies, early eighties, you, uh, American Indian movement had a couple of delegations to Lebanon, uh, to meet with, uh, at the time, uh, Yasser Arafat, uh, uh, Chicanos, uh, there was a Chicano delegation in 1984. That met with Arafat in Lebanon as well. Because again, following 67, those lines were drawn and it was clear where we stood. If we stand on the side of anti-colonialism, then we stand on the side of Palestine.

Iskander: Sure. Okay. So in certain ways the struggles have, by way of similar or shared experiences of colonialism, there's kind of there's always been a connection by way of similar experiences, kind of a shared enemy. But it's really kind of in the mid 20th century, 60s, 70s in the United States that we see a bit more of kind of recent or more recent history of people more explicitly making the links and various groups, including groups of indigenous peoples in the United States meeting with Palestinians and vice versa. Okay. Sure, no, this is very helpful history, Professor Hernandez. um can you um so aside from um i mean focusing on uh the topics we've mentioned before that you you focus on in your research um you you are a a scholar of uh decolonial studies um and in in south africa um uh decolonial studies or decoloniality has become something um very kind of mainstream And you have been involved, very involved, in a number of summer schools, publications, movements that identify as decolonial. So I just, I kind of wanted to get your take, Professor Hernandez, on what makes indigenous Palestinian solidarity decolonial or not. These are long-term struggles. And in both cases, I mean, they're really ongoing. Is there ever a moment where we can say that we were fully decolonized?

Roberto Hernandez: Well, I guess I'll start backwards with that last question and say no. And anyone that claims so to me would already be a huge red flag right and and I see that in the sense that, as we started many you know, many of us started doing a lot of this work, I mean predates it predates the summer schools obviously right we oftentimes we look to. Someone like M.S. Césaire, for example, is a key thinker, François Nol, obviously, but even Césaire before him, as marking what Nelson Mandela Torres and others have called the decolonial turn. Because there's also then the question of anti-colonialism versus decoloniality. Sometimes people use them interchangeably, but I think it's important to demarcate the difference between One could be anti-colonial, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're decolonial, right? And that's okay, right? But we need conceptual clarity on these differences because ultimately it speaks to having conceptual clarity on the extent of the problem, right? And so when we talk then, as I was mentioning, you know, the delegations, these delegations have continued. Solidarity has continued here in the border every year. For the last 15 years, every January, we have a series of events called the Nero Zapatista, which is an honor of the Zapatista indigenous struggle in Southern Mexico. So we have educational events commemorating the anniversary, but also bringing Zapatismo here. What does Zapatismo look like in our context? And one of the events that happens every year as part of an Ero Sabatista, or at least for the last five years, had been indigenous Palestinian anti-border 5K. So we would literally go on a 5K run You know, with Kumeyaay elders and runners at the front end, followed by Palestinians with Palestinian flag right behind, and we do a 5K along the border. So there's different forms of solidarity have continued through and through. But part of the question around, you know, whether indigenous Palestinian is the colonial or not, I mean, this is, I think, where maybe I should mention about that visit from Amira Haas. Amira Haas wanted to come to the border because she heard about, we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us. She heard about indigenous solidarity with Palestinians. So she wanted to come to the border to meet the indigenous people supporting Palestine. And through mutual colleagues and friends up in San Francisco, they sent her down our way. So she came to San Diego and was given my number and said, call Roberto, he'll show you around, he'll talk to you about these things. But even there, Amira, with all due respect to her, had this very romanticized idea about what or who indigenous She thought she was going to find, you know, people in regalia, like just walking around regalia talking about, you know, solidarity with Palestine. And unfortunately, you know, that's not the case. And we had to sit her through, we sat with her for hours over the course of a week, trying to explain to her the history of colonialism as experienced by indigenous peoples in the Americas to get her to understand one, this question of mestizaje, racial mixture, but also to get her to understand the dynamics that are different, as I was saying earlier, with indigenous peoples in the US versus indigenous people in Mexico and Latin America. What happens when borders get put up? What happens when the borders literally split the same people in two? And some are deemed Mexican and others are deemed Native American over here. And then what happens when people that are indigenous from Latin America migrate to these territories and become deemed immigrants? and not indigenous. We literally sat with her for hours, like I said, over the course of a week, trying to get her to understand that in the US-Mexico border context, yes, here we're in Kumeyaay territory, but the Chicano indigenous question is also just as pertinent to understand the various dynamics that are at play. We took her out to the Kumeyaay reservations and she was surprised that there, some, not all of the reservations, some have casinos. And she was just really intrigued by that and couldn't understand native casinos. And again, because she came with a particular image in mind of wanting to find these true authentic Indians. And so we thought that after all these hours of trying to explain to her that history, how it's much more complicated, how we can't talk about indigeneity without talking about borders and mestizaje and all these different dynamics, we thought she would get the story better. But ultimately, she writes a story in Haaretz. You know, she showed up with a Palestinian friend of hers, Manal, who's a colleague of mine in San Diego State now. And me and my then wife took her to the actual place where the border wall meets the ocean. Here, sometimes people see these images. There's a U.S. Mexico wall. Border wall shoots out about 100 feet into the ocean. So we went to that. We walked her there, you know, to get a close glimpse of the border and so on. Long story short, she writes this article, beautiful article, but it begins with an Israeli, a Palestinian, and two Indians walk along the U.S.-Mexico border. And that's the thing, right? When we talk about ourselves as Chicanos, Indígenas, we're indigenous, but we're Chicano, and it's indigenous and not indigenous, something else. But it speaks to this longer history, right, in terms of How then do we understand even our ideas about what is indigenous, right? Nobody, if we really think historically, no one is inherently indigenous, right? What happens with colonization is that different people are indigenized. They are deemed only of that territory, fixed to the territory, even in the Americas, part of the land. And therefore comparable. So I tend to speak more about the necessity to think about processes of indigenization. And in the case of Chicanos, indigenization and then deindigenization and being told you're now immigrant, you're not indigenous. And the work of decolonization then becoming not so much about re-indigenization, because even that first indigenization was already a way of separating peoples, multiple peoples, whether it be Kumeyaay, whether it be Wairarika, Diné, Tohono O'odham, where all these various different peoples rendering them into this one generic indigenous category. So I think we also now have naturalized the idea of indigenous in a racialized way, instead of recognizing that it was indigenization as a process. What we need to be talking about is peoples. What we need to be talking about is the Kumeyaay peoples, O'odham peoples, the Diné people, the Widadika peoples, right, we're various peoples, we're diverse peoples, not just a generic Indigenous, right? Because if we only focus on reifying this category of Indigenous as natural, biological, racial, then we've already accepted one of the foundational means of colonialism, right? So it's a little bit more complicated, and ultimately, Right. Just to close off on this is that as we explore and struggle and build further, we're going to have new questions that emerge for us. And we have to be open to those new questions and we have to keep walking and keep challenging not just power, but challenging even ourselves and our conceptions of self based on these new questions that open up that currently we might not even be seeing. But it's that spirit of openness to those new challenging questions, even of ourselves, that to me is ultimately the colonial attitude. Because if we don't approach it with openness, If we approach it with static categories, we struggle, we get some victories, we think we achieved an end goal and are now decolonized, then any new question that emerges, whether from others or from ourselves internally, is going to be seen as not decolonial, but even counter or counter-revolutionary, if you will, right? This is a epistemology of revolution that for closest continued growth, once you arrive at the destination, any new challenge, even from within, is no longer seen as growing together, but rather as you are now challenging the revolution, you are counter-revolutionary and therefore a problem. So I think we have to think about the decolonial in terms of that ongoing walking. As the Zapatistas that I mentioned earlier say, we walk in walking while asking questions. We can walk and preach, we have the answer, whether it be the Communist Manifesto or any other presumed answer that's an end all to all questions. No, we don't even know the types of questions that we're going to be dealing with in the future. So we have to have and openness, even to challenge ourselves. If our insistence is that we are about justice, so people committed to justice, then that openness has to always be there.

Iskander: I think that you've raised a really, really important point, Professor Hernandez, about this idea of what it means to be indigenous, what it means to be decolonial, what it means to be involved in struggle. I think the way that you framed it is very, very crucial and important for all of us committed to this ongoing process. I mean, you think of the context of Palestine, like you were mentioning with the Americas, Turtle Island, and it's when did this thing called Palestine come into existence? And when did this thing called indigenous peoples come into existence? We have to be careful with this question because, especially in relation to the powers that be and the enemy, of course, we're Palestinian, we're indigenous, you don't dictate our terms. You can't tell us who we are. You can't tell us who we want to be and what our history is. That's our job. And we're complex just as you're complex. But when we do have those moments, when we do have that space amongst each other, I think the point that you're getting about about really kind of questioning what's an authentic indigenous person, what's an authentic Palestinian. what's an authentic decolonial struggle it's very very important this idea of walking wow I think it's very helpful for thinking through this issue so I mean I'm On that point, we're going to have to wrap up soon. But I just wanted to ask, I mean, we're in, I think, a very interesting moment in human history broadly, in the history of indigenous struggle, Palestinian struggle. There are many kinds of pressing challenges that, let's say, Palestinians are facing in relation to apartheid Israel and the country surrounding them. A number of the Arab countries have began to normalize state relations with apartheid Israel. And I just wanted to get your take on what you think are kind of the most crucial events happening right now, whether positive or negative, successes, victories, I mean, the unfortunate forms of normalizations we face. What are some of the more pressing issues that we're facing right now?

Roberto Hernandez: Yeah, I mean, I think it ultimately leads to this very same question of what I was just alluding to, that even a struggle for liberation if the end goal is whether it be a one state solution or two state solution, it's still a state. So why a state, right? And why reproduce a very logic of the nation state, the national territorial borders of demarcate that compartmentalize our mother earth more broadly into these entities, these political juridical entities known as nation states. So we run the risk of reproducing, again, whether one state or two state, finding a solution only in such a way that reproduces the logic of the problem as a whole, which is the interstate system to begin with, right? And so how might we get creative to not just think of those solutions that one might say, well, we have to be practical because nation states is the only way you're legible in this world. well, you know, maybe that's the problem and maybe that's what we need to be tackling, right? And again, like I mentioned earlier, thinking in terms of peoples, various peoples and not necessarily states, because when we look at some of even the Arab states, some of those governments that are normalizing relations with apartheid Israel are not representing the peoples. They're representing their own economic interests. They tend to be a political elite political, economic elite, even of a Muslim variety, even of an Arab variety, but nevertheless, there's different interests there. If we spoke in terms of peoples, the various peoples that compose these various different nation states, or even internal to one nation state, then we begin to decenter that logic and the power that the state holds. So I'm all for this. the struggle of the Palestinian peoples, not necessarily towards the state, but ultimately that's for them to decide. But when it comes to that question of, well, towards what end, you know, I think we've tried nation states for at least a couple hundred years and they've proven to only further entrench the problems of coloniality, of global coloniality, right? So I think that's ultimately what I think the moment calls for, right? If anything, this pandemic has allowed us to take a moment to an extent to step back and reflect on some of these crucial questions. So are we gonna struggle with such a way that only further entrenches the types of divides that got us here to begin with? Or are we gonna start trying to find new avenues out of these political dead ends or cul-de-sacs that we're currently in. Because I think ultimately the state is a cul-de-sac. So how might we then start thinking about a revolutionary struggle amongst people, across peoples, between peoples, for the peoples, right? And this is where I find some very inspiring examples in indigenous movements, and I'll say now this way, in indigenous movements in Latin America, and Los Zapatistas recently announced they're actually going to travel to Europe, to Africa, to the Middle East, and they want to go and make relations and meet with peoples who struggle from below, who struggle is for life itself. And to me, these are exciting developments because it's really putting in motion what, before his death, the founder, one of the two founders of the Black Panther Party, Huey P. Newton, began writing about what he called intercommunalism. You know, and at the time I've met older Black Panthers, you know, we don't know what the hell Huey was talking about when he was talking about intercommunalism, but now 40, 50 years removed, one could argue that what he was trying to sketch out there was this conception of the peoples struggling as people making relations with other peoples in a way that he centers a state, right? Across communities, across peoples. And in part, some of these indigenous movements are now actualizing that. Not in theory, but in their practice, in their way of walking and being in this world, making direct relationships as peoples with other peoples. And I think that to me is, at least for the time being, a way of reconfiguring political struggle in ways that do not entrench the very same problems we're trying to move away from.