Indigenous dance, cultural continuity, and resistance: A netnographic analysis of the Palestinian Dabke in the diaspora

Abstract

Contending with the structural erasure and appropriation of their land, culture, history, and traditions imposed by the settler state, Palestinians have adopted/adapted traditional cultural elements to further their nationalist aspirations and assert their rights as Palestine’s Indigenous people. In the diaspora, Palestinians practice and perform the dabke folkdance, as a tool of anti-colonial memory maintenance and knowledge transfer. In this context, the dabke has been (re)shaped to keep up with the invasive nature of settler colonialism, by evolving to protect indigeneity, resist imagined settler geographies, and represent an embodied landmark of Palestinian existence and history. In this paper, we examine the digital platforms of a diasporic dabke dance academy in Ontario, Canada, highlighting the innovations of using social media to broadcast the teachings and performance of dabke while promoting Palestinian cultural continuity against settler colonialism. We employ the theoretical framework of sumud, a specifically Palestinian mode of steadfast anti-colonial being/becoming to explain that the performance of dance, and the subsequent broadcasting via digital social media platforms is an innovative approach to counter settler colonialism. Cultural and community leaders such as dancers, teachers, and choreographers celebrate Palestinian resilience, resistance, and restoration, while mobilizing global solidarities through social media and dance.