EPF PIN member Tinka Perry reflects on the Nakba, commemorated in May, and an artwork she saw at the Native American Museum in Santa Fe after the EPF PIN leadership retreat in February.
This week I have been acutely aware of the Nakba anniversary. Over the past 4 years I have been learning more and more about Palestine, from reading, meeting Palestinians, and visiting there last summer. The more I learn, the deeper the inhumanities suffered by Palestinians, at home and in the diaspora, touch my heart. And it seems to get more and more difficult to talk with some people who just shut it out because of the ‘Israeli Narrative’ that we are told and believe until our eyes are opened.
I was blessed last February to be with 21 other people who feel the same, at the PIN conference in Albuquerque. Everyone in the room had Palestinians whom they know on their hearts. We were working on how we and our church can best help Palestinians, as some shared with us the trips they have made to Palestine. The most touching was when 4 PIN leaders showed a video from their trip into Gaza after the 2014 “war”…scenes from driving around Gaza, one scene of destruction after another. We were told this is former homes, this is a former school, this is a hospital. Yet here are women playing with kids, working to dispel the PTSD they are all experiencing. A ray of hope in a very broken world, yet the people there carry on…
After the conference I was at the Native American Museum in Santa Fe, and one of the first things I saw was a storyteller…a clay figurine of a Grandma/Grandpa telling the tribal stories, and there are many smaller figures on their chest, shoulders, arms, etc. This, for me, became a symbol of the conference. Except those on our hearts are not the ones hearing the stories, but the ones about whom we are telling the stories. The many Palestinians who remember the Nakba this week, and pray for a better future, as we do for them.
Thanks for this post about the conference in Albuquerque. I was never SO keenly aware of our offense against Native American Tribes ( and African Americans and immigrants) as I have become since working for Palestinian Human Rights. How clear it is that our support of Israel's Occupation is tied to our own history of Occupation in this country.
Israel is a mirror to us! We need to make reparations here as we work for human rights for Palestinians.