Graduation Date
Fall 2020
Document Type
Thesis
Program
Master of Arts degree with a major in Social Science, Environment and Community
Committee Chair Name
Cutcha Risling Baldy
Committee Chair Affiliation
HSU Faculty or Staff
Second Committee Member Name
Janelle Adsit
Third Committee Member Name
Nicholas Perdue
Subject Categories
Environment and Community
Abstract
In this thesis, I retell and reclaim stories that have been shared and passed down within my family and family history in relation to our homeland, Palestine, and more specifically to the Jordan River. I argue that the construction of the dam in the 1960s on the Jordan River, by a zionist state, is an extension of both the settler colonial state and the treatment of the land/rivers as inherently linked with the treatment of Indigenous people. The carceral spaces and geographies settler states create are part of both the destruction of the land and the genocide Indigenous people experience. The Jordan River is a sacred site that was once a natural border and has now become a militarized border. As the colonization of the River takes place, the stories, and memories shift. The river becomes an important examination of settler colonialism and the expansion of a Zionist state and occupation of Palestine. Migration between Jordan and Palestine was a part of Indigenous Palestinians and Jordanians daily experiences prior to existences of modern states. However, with the rise of Zionism, the river becomes central to controlling the landscape and erasing the memory of both migration and the river itself leading to both ecological disasters and the Nakba (catastrophe) of the Palestine people. As a displaced Palestinian the refusal to let go of the memory of river and the liberation of our homeland becomes central to the question of Palestine and return.
Citation Style
MLA
Recommended Citation
Awwad, Megan Rose, "Retelling narratives of eco-memory: settler colonialism and carceral occupation of the Jordan River" (2020). Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects. 453.
https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/etd/453
Included in
Environmental Studies Commons, Ethnic Studies Commons, Indigenous Studies Commons, Near and Middle Eastern Studies Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Social Justice Commons, Tourism Commons