Documentary solidarity against settler colonialism: Lara El Mekaui, ‘Lands of Solidarity: Understanding Contemporary North American and Palestinian Indigenous Realities through Interactive Documentary’, in Francesca Mussi (ed.), Indigenous Storytelling and Connections to the Land: More-Than-Human Worlds, Palgrave, 2024, pp. 253-275 | settler colonial studies blog

Documentary solidarity against settler colonialism: Lara El Mekaui, ‘Lands of Solidarity: Understanding Contemporary North American and Palestinian Indigenous Realities through Interactive Documentary’, in Francesca Mussi (ed.), Indigenous Storytelling and Connections to the Land: More-Than-Human Worlds, Palgrave, 2024, pp. 253-275

28Sep24

Abstract: Malek Rasamny and Matt Peterson’s 2018 documentary Spaces of Exception explores the histories and political commonalities found between Indigenous and Palestinian communities in North America and South-West Asian refugee camps, respectively. Building on the theory of inter/nationalism developed by Steven Salaita (Inter/Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016), as well as on Mike Krebs and Dana Olwan’s comparative study of settler colonialism between Canada and Israel (‘From Jerusalem to the Grand River, Our Struggles Are One’: Challenging Canadian and Israeli Settler Colonialism’, Settler Colonial Studies 2(2): 138–64), this chapter analyzes the potential, as represented in Spaces of Exception, for solidarity between Indigenous peoples and Palestinian refugees. I argue that the documentary’s use of changing cartography reveals a historical parallel of land seizure that incites necessary political solidarity among nations occupied by settler colonialism. Spaces of Exception is an interactive documentary, which, Kathleen Ryan and David Staton state, “provides an opportunity for decolonization,” as “it offers a shared authority with narrators, audiences, and filmmakers” (Ryan and Staton, Interactive Documentary: Decolonizing Practice-Based Research. London: Routledge, 2022, p. 3). Through this interactive practice, the documentary’s depiction of daily life in Indigenous reservations and Palestinian refugee camps—and the larger project The Native and The Refugee it is part of—contributes to decolonizing efforts in these communities through reorienting focus from the state to the nation, and therefore reaffirming the need for Indigenous and refugee political solidarity. With the insight of interactive documentary theory, I also make the claim that beyond showing solidarity, Spaces of Exception contributes to decolonial work through the documentary medium.

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