The Lenape Indian tribe that once inhabited Manhattan called the mainland “Turtle Island,” even though it is a continent, not an island. Democratic socialists now refer to America as “Turtle Island” as a way of delegitimizing America and its non-Indian inhabitants, and paving the way for America’s “decolonization.” For example, the Twin Cities chapter of Democratic Socialists of America has called for “rematriation of land” from its current owners in both America — “Turtle Island” — and Israel. It did so in calling for the eradication of Israel “From the River, to the Sea” (Israel consists of most of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea).
As the Center of the American Experiment notes, “To the Twin Cities DSA, both Minnesota and Israel are ‘stolen land’ that needs to be ‘decolonized.'” Three city council members in Minneapolis are members of the Twin Cities DSA, including two who are also elected Democratic politicians.
It has also become common on college campuses to refer to the United States as “Turtle Island” to lend support to movements that seek to reclaim America and Israel from their current inhabitants. For example, student groups whose members comprise much of Columbia University’s student body recently formed an anti-Israel, anti-American group called Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which seeks to abolish capitalism, police, and prisons, and decolonize “Turtle Island” and Israel. It also peddles the anti-semitic conspiracy theory that America’s police are trained mostly by Israel’s IDF, which is complete nonsense.
The Columbia University Apartheid Divest group claims,
All systems of oppression are interlinked: The fates of the peoples of Palestine … Puerto Rico, Korea, Guam, … Hawai’i … Turtle Island, and other colonized bodies are interconnected.
We are committed to creating a multi-generational, intersectional, and accessible space dedicated to fighting for abolition, transnational feminism, anticapitalism, and decolonization…We do not believe that prisons, police, profit over people, militarism, war, colonialism, or imperialism will keep us safe….We reject the violence of the Israel Defense Forces-trained, police-industrial complex that chokes our communities and disproportionately enacts brutality against people of color. ….We believe in … Land Back, and the Right of Return, from Palestine to Turtle Island.
Most of Columbia’s student body belong to the groups that form the Columbia University Apartheid Divest coalition. The coalition includes many student groups, including those with large memberships, such as the Black Students Organization, Asian American Alliance, Student Workers of Columbia (the union for teaching and research assistants at Columbia), Amnesty International, Young Democratic Socialists of America, Caribbean Students Association, Columbia Queer Alliance, Columbia Chicanx Caucus, Columbia Vietnamese Students Association, Muslim Students Association, Palestine Students Union, Somali Student Association, African Students Association, Housing Equity Project, White Coats 4 Black Lives, CU Afghan Student Alliance, African Studies Working Group, Columbia University Black Pre-Professional Society, Pakistani Students Association, Barnard Columbia Urban Review, Club Bangla (the group for students from Bangladesh), Take Back The Night, Native American Council, Mujeres (women), The Columbia Review, Student Organization of Latines, and Columbia Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association.
The coalition’s desire to “decolonize” Israel of its Jews and make them return to their “home” countries ignores the fact that Jewish inhabitants of Israel are not “colonists” and Israel is their home country and the original home of the Jewish people. Most Israeli Jews were born in Israel, rather than being immigrants. And for most of the past 3,000 years, there have been substantial numbers of Jews in Israel. Indeed, Jews appear to be descended from the original Canaanite inhabitants of the region, who lived there thousands of years ago, while Arabs did not live in the region at all until the Seventh Century AD.
As economist Lyman Stone notes, “Of the last 3,000 years, Jews have been the largest religion in Palestine for about 1250, Muslims around 900, Christians around 600, and various pagan religions the rest. Muslim domination corresponded with extremely low population, which is why Jewish immigration worked” in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Advocates of “decolonization” believe that Americans should return their land to the indigenous peoples who once lived on the land, claiming that the land was all stolen. In reality, much of the land transferred by Native Americans to whites was purchased by whites, not taken by force.
The Native American population was so depleted by disease in the 17th Century that Indian tribes could afford to sell some of their land to whites, because they weren’t using most of it. Selling land they didn’t need made sense — they could use the money they got for the land to buy firearms or metal-tipped arrows to defend themselves against hostile tribes, and to buy other useful things, like pots and pans, cotton and wool cloth, and metal tools needed to improve their agricultural output. Transfers of land were often entirely voluntary. Legal historian Stuart Banner’s book “How the Indians Lost Their Land” explains this.
Some “decolonization” advocates believe it is acceptable for indigenous peoples to massacre settlers’ descendants (such as white Americans) to reclaim the land.
But even in situations where white settlers took land by force, that does not necessarily mean that today’s white inhabitants should be “decolonized” and driven from that land. Native Americans routinely displaced or exterminated other tribes, so Indians who occupied the land when whites first encountered them may only have been on that land for a few generations — they may have been “colonizers” just as much as the whites who followed them. And tribes driven from their land by whites in some cases ceased to exist, as disease or hostile encounters with other tribes resulted in the tribe ceasing to exist. If a tribe does not exist, its former lands cannot be returned to it, and any tribe that seizes such lands will have no logical claim to them (by contrast, current residents who bought the land from prior owners of any race can at least point to reasonable investment-backed expectations as a justification for continuing to hold such land, regardless of whether such land passed from Native Americans to whites generations ago through a voluntary purchase or violent conquest).
