Muslims living in North America are party to the contracts and agreements signed with the Indigenous Peoples
By Zaineb Survery
May/June 2022
The importance of honoring contracts cannot be overemphasized: “O you who believe! Fulfill the contracts” (5:1). Short and sweet, yet severely profound. The longest verse in the Quran 2:282, is about contracts.
Muslims recognize that contracts are not confined to what is signed on paper, but could also be verbal agreements exchanged with an individual, one’s child, spouse, community or corporation. A lie is a lie — breaking an agreement — and disobedience toward God. This situation (and punishment in the Hereafter) worsens when the broken agreement leads to zulm (oppression). But what if we didn’t directly break the agreement, and yet know that someone did and that we continue to benefit from that lie? How does this reality make us any different from the jahil (the ignorant)?
Credit: Mike Greenlar
This is exactly how most of the approximately 5 million Muslims on Turtle Island (Canada, the U.S. and Mexico) live today – unaware of or ignoring the living circumstances of the First Nations or Original Peoples of these Lands. Even after five centuries, most of them continue to be economically, racially and politically marginalized and oppressed in their own homelands. In short, Muslims need to realize that they constitute a contractual party just by living on Turtle Island and enjoying its benefits.
On February 17, the University of Toronto (UT) hosted its third annual Indigenous-Muslim panel, “Indigenous and Muslim Perspectives on Colonization” . Attendees explored the cohabiting relations on Turtle Island within the realm of state agreements.
Kathy Bullock, Ph.D., a UT lecturer in political science, hosted the panel outlining one’s responsibility with regards to Truth and Reconciliation. These two undertakings must be always paired and spoken together, for one cannot reconcile or correct without first knowing the truth of what happened and why. After all, haqq (truth) and islah (reform) are among the many moral values shared by both peoples. She said we cannot claim to live by Truth and Reconciliation if we continue to benefit from the injustices stemming from broken treaties.
Three research panelists highlighted treaties in the Islamic domains as covenants, Indigenous agreements of non-surrendered land and utilizing vocabulary to decolonize.
Dr. John Andrew Morrow, a Métis Muslim, highlighted upholding covenants as Prophet Muhammad (salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) did when interacting with multiple ethnicities and faiths versus “only a hypocrite breaks his oath,” thereby creating blueprints for subsequent Muslim civilizations, namely the Umayyad and Ottomans with Christians and/or Europeans. In fact, Christians would remind Muslims of the just prophetic tradition if the treaty was not being honored.
He contrasted the obligation of fulfilling one’s promises against the 500 treaties broken by the U.S. against Native Americans, and the 70 treaties signed in Canada, as a “history of broken promises” against the First Nations, Métis and Inuit for the 1,000+ tribes living on Turtle Island, as well as the fact that treaties were by established either “hook or crook” to begin with. However, he pointed out the (only) silver lining of broken treaties: the influx of immigrants who are increasingly relating with and advocating for the First People’s struggles against racism and colonization.
Dr. Susan Hill, a historian from Six Nations of the Grand River, outlined the three types of treaties among the Indigenous: those between Nations pre-dating European colonization, those with European empires, and Land Section treaties (“numbered treaties”). She noted that while Canada is most comfortable with Land Section Treaties, conversations on those treaties with the colonial empires — such as the Nanfan Treaty of 1701 or the first-ever treaty made with outsiders: the Tawagonshi Treaty of 1613 between the Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee and the Dutch — remain vital.
The Tawagonshi treaty is more commonly known as the Guswenta, or the Two Row Wampum Belt. These belts are not something to be worn, but rather are visual forms of communication. These pictorial format treaties, created by the Indigenous peoples of the time, conveyed the respective treaty through symbols and mutual understandings, versus the written letter and word. Ultimately, the “oral agreement is still the agreement.”
For example, each row in the Two Row Wampum Belt represents the two societies: European/settler and the Original People. Visually, the Wampum belt refers to the two peoples governing their own people or living life in their own way: the canoe streaming down one river of the blue line, and the ship travelling on the other line. (Canoes and ships were the first mode of long-distance transportation on Turtle Island). If someone tries to govern using both systems or to be present on both modes of transportation at once, then he/she falls in the water and mayhem ensues.
Now the question arises: How can two systems be implemented on one landmass, particularly when there is a conflict of interests regarding resources? The Indigenous manner is via respect, peace and friendship. Respect must be first, for everything flows from it, along with cooperation and social harmony. If any element is missing, then zulm begins.
Dr. Salman Sayyid (professor, Rhetoric and Decolonial Thought, the University of Leeds) equates zulm with racism. He highlighted how colonization and racism are “synonymous” or twin phrases, given that they are continuous threads from the past to the present. He pointed out that while the common Western narrative contends that there was no Islam in the Americas until large-scale Muslim immigration began in the 1960s, we must acknowledge that Muslims made up 30-50% of slaves forced to live in the Americas during the Atlantic-slave trade.
In addition, while Dr. Sayyid states the “concept of racism emerges from the Germans’ treatment of Jews in the 1930s” — really, their views and actions are no different from how European empires have subjugated continents. He elaborated after the common thread between “colonialism” and “racism” is that “colonialism” is for developing states and “racism” for developed ones. He further elaborated that acknowledging and counteracting zulm can be accomplished by decolonizing: to “reactivate mobility using cultural resources to think about the future, rather than think about the past.”
Yet is that not what Islam is all about? Where we accept all divine commands that no matter how difficult a situation is, we need to have faith in Him, as He has enabled us to function as mediums or vehicles to alleviate any form of oppression — or at least try to do so. After all, the prophetic tradition is to have hope and find commonalities in all of our relationships with other people, no matter how different we may seem, and to do the greater good.
Zaineb Survery is a Canada-based community writer and educator.
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