“If you’re not aware of your location in relation to the indigenous people’s liberation struggles of whose lands you’re on, then any liberation that you’re fighting for is still gonna be colonization.” – Klee Benally, Navajo artist and activist of Big Mountain, Black Mesa, AZ
The Root is working to gain a deeper understanding of what this means so that we can be in solidarity with indigenous liberation. We live, work, and organize on colonized land. The history of the Native people in the Connecticut River Valley has been intentionally and violently replaced. What we have learned about the place where we live is from a colonizer perspective. To decolonize our minds and our spaces it is crucial to un-learn the history of this river valley, so that we can better understand the Indigenous narrative.
The Root Social Justice Center presents “Decolonizing our minds and our spaces.” June 12th from 10am – 12:30pm. At this forum we will learn from Abenaki scholars Dr. Lisa Brooks and Judy Dow who have been working to reclaim the history of their ancestors and this land we live on. Our goal for this forum is to work together to better understand how the history of this land has been replaced with a colonized perspective. Educating ourselves in one way we can stand in solidarity with the present day struggle for Indigenous Sovereignty.
Come back in the afternoon for a workshop on mapping your story with artist Judy Dow. From 2-5pm she will help us to see the land around us with different eyes. This workshop is designed for 20 adult participants who wish to be educators and assist with telling the story from another perspective. Please call or email to pre-register: 802.254.3400 or therootsjc@gmail.com.
Resident aliens
As far back as all recorded histories indigenous peoples have been displaced. In fact, it is nearly impossible to even define all of human world history without colonization. No sooner had early homo sapiens took their first steps out of Africa they colonized the land, air and water. The desire to exert control over our surroundings and everybody else’s is primordial.
The chances of this species to “decolonize our minds and our spaces” is practically nil. What is returned to one indigenous group is taken away by another.
Maybe it’s time to step out of the box altogether to go the other way. Perhaps there is no really indigenous group. All we really have are temporary residences and situations.
If we subscribe to African Genesis then the only real naturally occurring “indigenous” people are (or were) in Central Congo.
I hope I'm wrong
I agree that there’s no way to return to simpler times. As they say, you can’t put the toothpaste back into the tube. As a consequence of specialization and ownership mentality, we as a species have swapped the territory for the map. In other words; control, demarcation, delimitation has replaced organic diversity and multiplicity.
I’ve been haunted by a thought lately that I’d love to have refuted. It used to be that exploration, migration, even brutal-minded colonization was the norm, hallmarks of the human impulse of expansion. Now it feels like there’s been a shift, like we are in the midst of ‘an active shooter’, and the new mandate is, ‘shelter in place’.
hmmm...
I think we’re almost done with colonization on this planet, but the wealthy are working actively to colonize other planets. The dream lives on!
But you are right. There is a shift. We don’t have those great expanses of places to go get lost. It’s almost impossible to get lost these days, and really no place to escape to. In the most remote areas we still have planes and satellites overhead, and the sound of traffic in the distance.
I’d say colonization, on earth, has become personal. It’s super wealthy person A wanting and taking the stuff of super wealthy person B – a takeover! It’s corporate colonization.
"Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future..."
Shelter in place? Only for those afraid of “chemtrails.” lol!
But, seriously, without major technological liftoff and high velocity space travel advances, space travel at this point is really mostly entertainment and adventure than anything else.
The fact is, humans really are only multicolored water-bag cooking mixes with a few solid chemicals stirred in. Throw in some self-centered, anthropomorphic, mythlusters brainteasers and you’ve got stuffed rag dolls trying leave their places of shelter too frequently because the can’t handle what they’ve got.
Inherent, innate earthly colonization, however, makes sense. We mustn’t forget our place in the mammalian scheme of things. All mammals swap “the territory for the map” in their quest to nest, burrow, build mounds, takeover a cave, etc., so that, yes, colonization is the norm.
Throughout time, if every indigenous peoples had the right to reclaim past and ancient lands to revitalize their cultures and rebuild their societies we would have to rewrite history. What is more important is preservation of indigenous artifacts as historical references as best we can.
“Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future…”
colonies
To get to the “first steps” colonization, a broad definition of colonize has to be used. A slightly more narrow one would limit it to those who went out and took political control over a place, rather than just went there and use what is found. In that sense, the earliest uprights may not have been colonizing so much as expanding, and colonizing politically might have started a bit later.
It doesn’t really matter… we have been colonizing for a long time. : )
I do think we can agree that there were people here before the Europeans took over, and this project seems to be one (of many these days) to set the record straight(er).
An effort to decolonize our minds might not be successful, but it might be an effort in the right direction. It may not get us to a specific goal, but might aim us toward a different future. I think we’re capable of changing how we think about things.
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The zen master would agree that there is no indigenous group, and that we are temporarily in temporary situations. Each time it is presented, each time it is new!
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Just as a word, “colony” sounds uptight to me. It’s not the sort of place I’d choose to live in, if given a choice.
Decolonization
I am hoping to go to this forum. Some of the discussion on this thread is very far reaching and philosophical, but I am actually thinking more about how my mind has been affected by growing up in the U.S. with its particular history of colonization of the native peoples. In Vermont, specifically the Abenaki. What assumptions do I carry around without even knowing it? How do those assumptions affect my actions in the world today? That sort of thing.
Though I understand that colonization may be as old as humanity itself, I am more interested in understanding ways it affects me so I can try to make changes in how I relate to others and to the earth. Though I don’t delude myself that I will ever decolonize my mind altogether, I do think that I can make steps in that direction through learning and vigilance.
I also highly recommend a book called Breeding Better Vermonters, which is an in-depth look at an ugly period in Vermont’s history (the eugenics project) that has everything to do with colonization.