A University of Minnesota professor received significant attention this month after calling for the end of the United States. The move comes as universities are under increasing criticism over what is being taught and practiced on campus, including multiple allegations of antisemitism.
Dr. Melanie Yazzie spoke during an event on campus hosted by a left-wing political organization, the Red Nation.
During the “From Minnesota to Palestine” event on Dec. 3, a number of speakers compared the current war between Israel and Palestine to issues facing Native peoples in the United States.
Yazzie is a professor of American Indian Studies event and co-founded the group. She said that the prospect of transferring land from its current owners to Native peoples was “going to happen.”
“Land back is going to happen," University of Minnesota professor Melanie Yazzie said during a "teach-in" about the Israel-Palestine conflict. “The goal is to dismantle the settler project that is the United States.” pic.twitter.com/glgwZpLmmD
— Alpha News (@AlphaNewsMN) December 21, 2023
“That’s going to happen, the indigenous perspective in Turtle Island, and how we also understand what is happening in Palestine,” she said. The use of the term Turtle Island described North America.
She said that the assembled group were “all indigenous people who come from nations that are under occupation by the United States government.” She compared this to the Israeli occupation of “Palestinian land.”
While she called the issue “one and the same, really,” the Gaza Strip has not been occupied by Israel for almost 20 years.
The professor said that is was “our responsibility as people who are within the United States to go as hard as possible to decolonize this place.”
Such an action, she said, would “reverberate all across the world because the U.S. is the greatest predator empire that has ever existed. So we want U.S. out of everywhere … and the goal is to dismantle the settler project that is the United States.”
The group declared that it was “dedicated to the liberation of Native peoples from capitalism and colonization.”
The comments come after significant protests in major cities and on campuses supporting the Palestinian cause. Protesters on campus have been accused of spreading antisemitism by both figures on the right and left.
The presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology testified before Congress recently, sparking controversy when they refused to outright condemn antisemitism on campus. The president of U Penn later resigned following her comments.
