Palestinians added to “Indigenous Peoples’ Day" by University

The Loony Left Strikes Again

Last week, Brown University’s Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs sent out greeting for “Indigenous Peoples’ Day Weekend,” which has replaced Fall Weekend — Columbus Day weekend — in the uber-politically correct academic environment. Brown’s action is part of the larger effort by the academic left to cast Columbus as a villain and focus on Native Americans as sainted martyrs.

But as if this celebration weren’t politicized enough, Brown made it poisonously so by including the “Palestinians” among the “indigenous people” whose plight was being observed. But what makes this story extra insidious is the fact that the school took this anti-American movement and attempted to turn it into an anti-Israel day as well. The left is so desperate to attack Israel that they twisted their own attack on the U.S. to do so.

“Indigenous Peoples’ Day (IPD),” explained the Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs, “celebrates the resilience and accomplishments of Indigenous people and acknowledges the contemporary struggles indigenous communities face today. Further, IPD is an intervention against erasure, a principle barrier to the improvement of indigenous sovereignty and health status.”

The struggling indigenous people in question, according to the Diversity Office, included “567 Federally Recognized tribes, 61 State Recognized tribes,” as well as “Hawaiians and the people indigenous to its territories in the Caribbean and Pacific Oceans.” Many of these groups, the announcement went on, “experience profound disparities in health care access and health status compared to the general population, resulting in elevated rates of diabetes, liver disease, and other chronic diseases,” which are “exacerbated by a significant shortage of primary care physicians in Indigenous communities and a long-standing mistrust of the American health care system rooted in a history of genocide and forced assimilation.”

After speaking exclusively of the difficulties of indigenous people in the United States and its territories, however, the Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs suddenly included an oblique and gratuitous swipe at Israel: “From Standing Rock to Palestine, Indigenous communities across the world continue to experience the pernicious effects of settler-colonialism on their sovereignty, their health, and their access to their traditional lands and practices.”

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