Palestinians carry Palestinian flags on their boats as they gather at the Gaza coast in support of the third Gaza Freedom Flotilla [Getty]
Canadian First Nations chief boards Gaza flotilla to protest against worldwide scourge of colonialism.
Robert Lovelace is a professor in the department of global development studies and a former chief of the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation. He spent 103 days in prison for defying a court injunction and continuing to protest against uranium mining on disputed land.
By Antonia Zerbisias
Robert Lovelace is still haunted by the Palestinian refugees in the grainy newsreels he saw as a boy.
Not surprising. For this former Ardoch Algonquin First Nations chief, the footage conjured up images from Canadian history’s darkest chapters – indigenous people being driven from their land and onto reserves.
“Those newsreels left a mark on me,” he tells Al Jazeera in a telephone interview. “These people who were homeless, carrying everything that they had. So I have always been interested in what has been going on in the Middle East.”
Lovelace, 67, is an aboriginal activist and semi-retired Global Development Studies professor at Queen’s University just south of his ancestral land in Ontario.
A father of eight, he has stood up against governments and corporations which have attempted to mine his people’s land, contaminate their water and plunder their sacred wild rice beds.
Standing up to Israel
Now he is standing up to Israel as he makes his way to Gaza on the third Freedom Flotilla. It’s a peaceful civil armada with some 50 crew and passengers from about 20 countries, sailing to focus world attention on the 1.8 million Palestinians illegally trapped by Israel in the Gaza Strip.
Lovelace is aboard the lead vessel, the Marianne of Gothenberg that left the Sicilian port of Messina late last Friday.
As he posted on his Facebook log: “We had divers that were paid for by the municipality of Messina to go under the boat and check it out to make sure that there was no sabotage that had taken place while we were in the harbour.” Smart move. That’s because this is his second attempt to sail to Gaza, having previously tried in 2011 on the Canadian boat, the Tahrir which was not only sabotaged but was seized in international waters by the Israeli navy. Its cargo of medical supplies was taken while the activists on board were arrested.
But nothing will stop him from going again.
“It’s a really important cause; it’s a non-violent way of demonstrating that there’s an illegal blockade,” Lovelace maintains.
Joining him and the international cast of activists, academics, and politicians are retired Quebec labour organiser Christian Martel, who is representing the province’s biggest trade unions as well as a number of NGOs, Montreal-based Ehab Lotayef, an engineer and writer who also sailed on the Tahrir, and Kevin Neish, who was on board the Mavi Marmara when nine Turkish activists were killed during a violent attack by Israel.
‘Unnecessary provocation’
Most controversially, at least in Israel, is the participation of Knesset member Dr Basel Ghattas. That’s because the foreign ministry asserts that the flotilla is an “unnecessary provocation” and that Ghattas “is serving the enemy”.
Asked why it’s important to set sail again, David Heap, the Canadian linguistics professor who mobilised the Tahrir and is one of this flotilla’s organisers, recalls that noted African-American author Alice Walker has called the flotilla the “Freedom Riders of this era”. “The 1960s civil rights movement responded to a call from oppressed people, just as our movement responds to a call from Palestinians,” Heap says. “The Freedom Riders did not stop after each setback, even when they were attacked violently. Instead, they kept on coming in solidarity, just as we keep on sailing against the blockade.”
Not surprisingly, Lovelace sees the parallels between Palestine and Canada’s First Nations. Land theft, occupation, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, containment, and restriction of movement … all the elements are there.
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