Among the scores of programs that have been cancelled in the Boston area over the last few weeks due to the Corona virus is our March 22 World Water Day event, which the Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine has been organizing in conjunction with the North American Indian Center of Boston, United American Indians of New England and 1for3, which works closely with the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem, Palestine.
‘Sustainable Futures: Indigenous and Palestinian Perspectives on Water, Land and Self-Determination’ had attracted considerable interest, and we trust it will again when it is re-scheduled in the fall.
Beginning in 2015, the Alliance has held annual stand outs and forums on March 22, the day designated as World Water Day by the UN in 1993. Various UN agencies have declared water to be a human right that “should be treated as a social and cultural good, and not primarily as an economic good.” The UN General Assembly formally recognized water as a human right in 2010.
Visitors to this website are well aware of the many ways Israel has deprived Palestinians of that human right, along with all others. Meanwhile, around the world large corporations have been reaping profits by turning water into a commodity. On Indigenous lands, water resources have been plundered and polluted, with devastating consequences for traditional ways of living and the environment.
The ongoing seizure and diversion of water to drive Indigenous peoples from their land has long been a weapon of colonial domination from the Americas to Palestine and beyond. But around the globe water has increasingly become a potent focus of resistance.
Here in the US, as elsewhere, Indigenous peoples have become water protectors and emerged as leaders in the battle against climate change. During the massive multi-year protests in North Dakota to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline that threatens the drinking water of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, Palestinians stood shoulder to shoulder with Indigenous activists. Palestinian-Americans joined the protests in North Dakota and Washington DC, and issued a powerful statement of solidarity.
Despite the violent repression at Standing Rock meted out by private security companies and paramilitary police forces that gathered in North Dakota from around the country, struggles for water and the environment continue.
See, for example, the struggle being waged by the Anishinaabe water protectors, among them Winona LaDuke, who was Ralph Nader’s vice-presidential running mate in 1996 and 2000 on the Green Party ticket. They are trying to stop the Canadian company Enbridge Energy from re-routing and enlarging its controversial Line 3, a 1,000-mile-long tar sands oil pipeline from Alberta, Canada to Superior, Wisconsin.
Enbridge, which owns part of the Dakota Access Pipeline and supported the repression at Standing Rock, has had over 800 spills over the past 15 years, and now plans to transport 915,000 barrels a day across Anishinaabe territory in northern Minnesota, threatening some of the most pristine lakes and best wild rice beds in the world.
In the years ahead, as climate change intensifies, and clean water resources become ever more scarce, it will be difficult to envisage a sustainable future without the strengthening and enlarging of the kind of solidarity ties currently being forged between Indigenous communities and Palestinians, and the engagement of all of us in movement building.
Here are three local actions you can immediately take:
1. Enbridge Energy, the same corporation that is threatening Anishinaabe lands, is planning to install a large fracked-gas Compressor Station at the base of Fore River Bridge In Weymouth, MA. The proposed compressor station will cause air, noise and odor problems, and could create serious health and environmental risks affecting residents in Weymouth, Quincy and Braintree. The gas isn’t even designated for local use, but would be sent through pipelines to the Indigenous Mi’kmaq territory in Canada to be made into liquefied natural gas and shipped to Europe (see https://www.nocompressor.com/home).
Email Governor Charlie Baker at https://www.mass.gov/orgs/office-of-the-governor and tell him you strongly oppose the building of the North Weymouth Compressor Station.
2. Send the Governor another message telling him that Massachusetts should NOT be importing electricity produced by Canada’s dirty megadams which threaten cultural survival, expose Indigenous communities to high levels of methylmercury and would not help solve the climate crisis. For more information see www.northeastmegadamresisance.org
3. The Corona virus crisis has forced the postponement of 1for3’s annual Walk for Water for Palestinian Refugees in Cambridge, MA. Donations for the Walk support water projects in Aida and other West Bank refugee camps, community healthcare for people who are housebound, and the provision of roof top gardens. This year they will also be earmarked for the building of a kindergarten for the children of Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem. These projects help keep hope alive at a uniquely difficult time for the people of Palestine. Please make a donation by visiting www.1for3.org and clicking on the Walk for Water box at the top of the page.
This year we may not be able to gather together to mark World Water Day, but we can still take a stand for water and environmental justice.
Nancy Murray, Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine
