AlterNative

Abstract

As Smith notes it has been the common experience of indigenous peoples to have their histories erased and retold by the conquering colonial powers, and all too common for indigenous people to be powerless and passive participants in this process. In this paper it is my intention to re-tell the history of my own people, the Palestinian Bedouin living in what is now southern Israel, from an indigenous perspective. It is also my intention to explore the ways in which the telling of history is not only a matter of the past, but is critical to determining current and future political and social policy. As such, the re-telling of indigenous histories - and the introduction of indigenous histories into mainstream discourse - is as much about our futures, as it is about our past. Furthermore, it is an act of resistance against the colonisers’ hegemony over the telling of history, and against the violence that their hegemony has both dictated and hidden from view.