Posted on 10/30/24
Jerusalem, Israel - Oct. 30, 2024 - Under the leadership of Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem (IEJ) Director Dr. Sheree Trotter and Professor Wayne Horowitz of Hebrew University an academic symposium was held on October 29, 2024, in Jerusalem, Israel.
Welcomed to Israel were participants from Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the US, and Canada including Indigenous people. Hundreds more wanted to attend, but had to watch online due to canceled flights.
Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem was the setting for the inaugural forum on Jewish Indigeneity and the Land of Israel.
Ilan Troen began with the topic of the Use of Settler Colonialism to Deny Jewish Indigeneity in the Holy Land. His handout included significant quotes from the Balfour Declaration, the Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), the Declaration of Israel's Independence, and the Palestinian National Charter.
The Denial of Jewish Peoplehood and Jewish Connection to the Land of Israel in Late-Soviet Propaganda by Izabella Tabarovsky was well prepared and presented. One US professor in the audience wanted her to have included the Bolshevik/Jewish influence, but she had a short time to cover a great deal of detailed information.
Very different was Hebrew University doctoral student Jan Safford. He used his research on ancient texts and family names to suggest how many Jews Yonah would have found in Nineveh.
Keynote speakers Natan Sharansky and Gil Troy spoke individually and took questions together. All the sessions are to be available online.
Sheree Trotter elaborated her expertise on Antisemitism and the Hijacking of Indigeneity: the roots of the so-called Māori View on Israel-Palestine. Not all of those on the program could attend, Ben Freeman, Brad Haami, Karen Restoule - First Nations Canada, and Shadi Halul - Aramean perspective provided Zoom messages.
In the afternoon of the full-day symposium, Kunduz Niiazova from Kyrgyzstan and PhD candidate at Tel Aviv University shared - Kyrgyz Epic Manas as a Historical Source for Soviet Ethnographers in the Soviet Nation Building Process. With 80 versions of Manas could that have come from oringally from Menashe was asked. Charles Asher Small, Founder and Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) spoke first of his personal history and relationship in Canada and to the Belz Rebbe, before expanding on the Implications of Antisemites Defining the Jews: From Indigeneity to Colonial Settler. Archeologist and specialist in the ancient Near East and Assyriology, Wayne Horowitz was the concluding speaker on Indigenous Narratives of Land and Sky - Modern and Ancient, Arctic Canada and the Land of Israel. From his time doing research in the Northwest Territories of Canada with the Gwich'in Tribal Council over the past ten years, he noted the importance of narrative song and dance to Indigenous People. The day ended with his connections of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel with Passover, the Omer, Sukkot and the harvest festivals, and more religious observances to the land. Finally, song and dance and the worlds of Hatikva:
"As long as in the heart, within,
The Jewish soul yearns,
And towards the ends of the east,
[The Jewish] eye gazes toward Zion,
Our hope is not yet lost,
The hope of two thousand years,
To be a free nation in our own land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem."
The IEJ has plans for more Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem Symposiums to be held in the future to explore the important subject.
