The tragedy of colonization

Posted: January 23, 2004 - 3:38pm EST
by: John C. Mohawk / Columnist / Indian Country Today
http://www.indiancountry.com/?1074890415


Some of my favorite people have complained when they hear Indians or other
Native peoples talking about colonization because, they say, people don’t know
what that term means. Actually, it’s easy to understand from an indigenous
perspective.

Beginning about five centuries ago, Europeans began arriving on distant shores
with a burning desire to exploit peoples and places. Not every European had
destruction in his or her heart, but in the big picture, on the nation-to-nation
level, a lot of bad things happened. It is true there were other "diasporas,"
incidents when people of a place went to other places and established beachheads
- colonies - but in the modern context, the European arrival is the one most
talked about. Europeans went all over the world, and wherever they could, they
established themselves. In most every instance, they used military force in an
effort to conquer the world, and this pattern unfolded in two waves. The first
wave began during the 15th century and was led by the Portuguese and Spanish and
was mainly focused on the islands of the Atlantic, West Africa, and the islands
of the Caribbean, Central and South America. Soon other European maritime powers
followed suit, including Holland, Sweden, France and, most prominently, England.

A second wave of European conquests took place during the nineteenth century as
a result of the industrial revolution. By 1890, practically every inhabitable
place on the globe was dominated either by a European power or a settler regime
speaking a European language. European colonization produced most of the most
horrific stories of all time, including numerous incidents of genocide. The
Spanish destroyed the Indian populations of the Caribbean even before the great
viral epidemics arrived, and Spain and Portugal exterminated the peoples and
cultures of the Canary Islands. Belgium committed unspeakable acts of murder and
brutality in the Congo and on one day - January 14, 1904 - Germany massacred
65,000 indigenous people in Namibia. Although there would be numerous nominees
for the title of worst barbarians of all time, the English have a good claim to
careful consideration. English speaking people committed numerous acts of
genocide in Newfoundland, in Tasmania, and in California where whole peoples
were slaughtered until none were left. They came close to success in Australia
and in many parts of North America where the list of indigenous nations who
greeted them diminished to but a few.

In the beginning, colonization referred to people arriving on distant shores but
the way it played out the word means much more. The arrivees used force to get
what they wanted, and they wanted everything of value, including land and labor,
and to get this they needed to change the Native people. They treated the
indigenous peoples as less than human, denying their humanity, despising their
religions and traditions, and in fact demanding at the point of a gun that they,
the indigenous, become their servants. In some countries, places like India, the
indigenous vastly outnumbered them and in every place people developed a burning
desire to send them home and to reclaim their land, their freedom, and their
dignity.

During World War II - an event which can be seen as a kind of European civil war
which Japan joined for its own reasons - President Roosevelt saw an opportunity
to dismantle the system of European dominated colonies and spheres of influence
to the advantage of American business interests. He advanced the idea of
decolonization, and following the war country after country threw off the yoke
of their European masters. From India to the Philippines (a U.S. colony) to
China and Indonesia and eventually Africa, indigenous peoples waved a
not-so-tearful farewell to the monsters who had made their lives a living hell.
By 1960 the United Nations had adopted the idea that all nations had a right to
self-determination.

Most of the indigenous peoples of the Americas (and all in Canada and the U.S.)
faced a very serious reality. In their country, the invaders outnumbered the
indigenous, sometimes by hundreds to one. They were not going to go back home.
In addition, their stated goal was the eradication of the indigenous nations as
nations by eroding all of the elements that make a distinct people a people:
their history, their languages, their laws and customs. It took quite a while
and a lot of boarding schools, missionaries, and corrupt public officials but
the process - being colonized - has had an impact. When an individual loses his
or her memory, they cannot recognize other people, they become seriously
disoriented, and they don’t know right from wrong. Sometimes they hurt
themselves. Something similar happens when a people become colonized. They can’t
remember who they are because they are a people without a common history. It’s
not that they don’t have a history, it’s just that they don’t know what it is
and it’s not shared among them. Colonization is a kind of spiritual collapse of
the nation. This is one result of a colonial education based on canonical "great
books" texts. Indigenous peoples’ histories and cultures are not in those texts,
and the life of the nation is not there, either. Identity is important. The
colonists were very successful "racializing" indigenous identities such that
people talk about being 25 percent of this or 40 percent of that, but one does
not belong to a nation based on one’s blood quantum. Belonging to an indigenous
nation is a way of being in the world. Holding a membership card is not a way of
being and money can’t buy it.

Colonization is the greatest health risk to indigenous peoples as individuals
and communities. It produces the anomie - the absence of values and sense of
group purpose and identity - that underlies the deadly automobile accidents
triggered by alcohol abuse. It creates the conditions of inappropriate diet
which lead to an epidemic of degenerative diseases, and the moral anarchy that
leads to child abuse and spousal abuse. Becoming colonized was the worst thing
that could happen five centuries ago, and being colonized is the worst thing
that can happen now.

De-colonization, on the other hand, means many different things to many
different peoples. In principle, however, it means undoing the damage of
colonization and involves elements such as living traditions and customs,
language retention, and an insistence on the right to BE Lakota, or Ganienkehaka
or whatever nation it is that people have a right to be.

John C. Mohawk, Ph.D., columnist for Indian Country Today, is an author and
professor in the Center for the Americas at the State University of New York at
Buffalo.

©2003 Indian Country Today

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