What is decolonization?
And why do some people seem to think it is racist?
Question inspired by this post in that other subreddit.
Posted Nov 4, 2015, 6:47 PM UTC
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- [/r/decolonial] What is decolonization? (x-post from /r/anarchy101) In the comments below: How is decolonization different from decoloniality?
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1
Decolonization in it's most basic definition is to reverse or get rid of colonizers and their influence. My contextualization of this is in the United States so I'll focus on that.
First, and most obviously, it is getting rid of United States government influence and control of Native tribes. Native Americans have "reservations" or tracts of land set aside for them and this is supposed to be "their land". This is a big issue for a few reasons:
This land was originally the really shitty land that the United States didn't want to have to develop as we were expanding westward from the colonies. The "gift" of this land is a symbol of ongoing genocide.
This also serves to legitimize United States claim on the land. All of the Americas were the Indians land. White men came in and laid claim to "property" and made the land theirs - The Earth belonged to no one and everyone; it was it's own sacred being and the White man segmented it up into personally owned and controlled property.
Reservations and area around reservations are often used for dumping toxic waste and testing harmful chemicals and weapons. This obviously creates massive issues.
Next, decolonization is about rejecting the assimilation into White Settler culture. I'm particularly well read on how gender and sexuality was used as a controlling mechanism so I'll talk about that
The Berdache ^^1 and Two-Spirit ^^2 peoples were integral parts of native culture. Colonizers suppressed the identities and made them adopt European sexuality and gender paradigms because it was more "civilized"
Mark Rifkin talks a lot about how Indians didn't have the conceptualization of "homosexual" or "transgender" or a lot of the various other categorizations that most of us are familiar with - but rather people who we would identify as "Queer" were often chosen and served important cultural roles. We effectively "turned them gay" to separate them from indigenous queerness to adopt a more appropriate form of non-hetero/non-cis identity formations.
Next, throughout the history of Queer politics (however radical or not) often tried to separate themselves "Settler Sexuality" and attempted to adopt cultural formations such as Berdache. This is problematic because it is taking something that is of important cultural significance and turning it into their own identity even though there weren't and never will be accepted into Native culture.
I think the best critique of it reads as such:
This quote is a probably the best way that I know how to frame what it is to be a colonizer within a cultural context. You can see this with white people participating in Pow-Wows, wearing War Bonnets as a fun hat, and hanging up Dream Catchers in their car mirrors. Decolonization is about rejecting the usage of these things as commodities and recognizing that it is sacred to a culture that your ancestors tried to destroy.
Decolonization is about allowing native tribes to carve out their own existence, their own way of life, and not have to be assimilated into White Culture.
I think the biggest and most obvious step is to emancipate all tribes from the sovereignty of the US government and return to their tribal governments as the sole source of indigenous authority.
"Decolonization" can become really complex that deals with every aspect of life, but at it's most simplest form it is to reject Native assimilation into White Culture, and to reject White Cultures adoption of Native cultural rites and traditions.
^1: We would most recognize the Berdache as traditionally masculine bodies performing femininity and feminine roles. This is reductionist but is the easiest quick descriptor. Some would be "homosexual" and some wouldn't. It often depended on the tribe.
^2: Two-Spirit were Indians who fulfilled both roles of Masculinity and Femininity at the same time. Often corresponding with tribal events and traditions.
This article What is Decolonization and why does it matter? explains it much more succinctly than I in a much less US Centric way. I'd highly recommend reading it real fast.
Thankyou Rad, I knew I could rely on you for a great response!
I will check out the article you linked. I also have some follow-up questions.
How do you separate the influence of the initial colonization from the influence of later immigrants? Do you? Does it matter?
In point 1 you talk a lot about "land rights" and possession of land. As anarchists, is this something you think that we should concern ourselves with? Is it worthwhile to return land to natives under a different form of state/capitalism, rather than work towards land being free? This ultimately seems to raise similar questions and problems as regional independence movements, like Scotland or Catalonia, that we recently discussed here.
The second point talks more about assimilation and cultural appropriation. I'm more familiar with these concepts in general, but do they have any important differences when discussed within the context of decolonization?
Again, thanks very much for your great response, it's a lot to think about. I hope to see more of you around here, and I hope you like the new look for r/anarchy101 !
I think it is impossible. I think it can only be contextualized as "What can we do to limit the colonization right now? and not What can we do to reject our ancestors colonization? My ancestors fucked up and murdered a lot of people and their culture, there is no way I can repair that.
I'm living in an area that used to be Tonkawa Tribal land so this month I'm taking a moment each day to recognize a part of their culture and their people and appreciate and respect it (but never adopt those traditions as my own, of course). I honestly don't know what else I can do right now other than make myself aware of the privilege I have because by ancestors were active colonizers - which makes me a White Settler today.
I think that Native Americans had a pretty close interpretation to "Property" that a lot of Anarchists would support. It was land that sustained their community and most tribes shared a lot of this land with other tribes - they never owned the land, but used and respected it. Of course there was some warring over land, I don't mean to erase that problematic part of Native culture, but in large it was communal and un-owned. The Earth owned itself as it's own sacred being and it was ridiculous for a person to be able to lay permanent claim to it.
I think the easiest way to return to that is to simply destroy our conceptualization of property rights so that no one owns the farms, the pastures, the forests, etc.. (So not just "means of production" but the very geography itself).
But I think it is impossible to decolonize the land entirely and return it to Indigenous peoples - we are already living here and we can't just move back to Europe. The best we can do is deal with the status quo and let no one own the land.
Yeah I think it is similar. You might have seen that post in r/Anarchism about Hawaii Native people claiming their own sovereignty - this means that no US laws would pertain to their current tribal claimed area. I think that is as far as "Decolonization" of the land can go right now.
There is a lot of room for Anarchists and traditional Native culture to agree in this area.
To be honest, I'm not sure, but I don't think so. The biggest difference is the historical roots of the systematic dismantling and assimilation into Settler culture. But in practice and effect, I don't think so.
Last, I didn't address this in my first comment:
Because it is separating Natives from the rest of the population along racial lines. I don't think this is racist but recognizing cultural difference and the history that has tried to destroy those - It's also important to note that there can be white Indians, and black Indians (who are referred to as "Freedman Indians" - to me this means that it is separating around cultural determination, and not racial determination). This is something that I'll have to keep thinking about to eventually give a better answer hopefully at the end of this month (I'm only reading stuff related to Native Culture/decolonization this month).
I certainly have confused and jumbled thoughts on this which is why I didn't want to originally answer it.
I do! That was the firs thing I noticed. It looks real nice! And I particularly like how the "@" and "Anarchy 101" are visibly separated links. Very slick!
I guess this should be its own thread, but what exactly is white culture?
Side question, how is anarchism compatible with "masculine" and "feminine" social roles, that is, gender roles?
Great questions.
I'll answer this first. While, yes, most modern Anarchist discourse regarding this is about breaking down the barriers between gender and sexuality I think it is important to view it in a different light when talking about Indigenous peoples. When it is (presumably) white people that is engaging in radical queer identity formation there isn't the historical roots of Queerness being essential to ones (sacred and deeply held) culture as it is the case with a lot of Natives - concepts like "Homosexual" and "Transgender" are actually fairly new inventions - Queerness obviously isn't, but this specific labeling and categorization is (and to be clear here, I identify as homosexual, so this isn't to push off or ignore the importance of these either).
Because White Settler Colonialism policed and crushed these Indigenous identities as a means of control, to return back to these Indigenous Queer paradigms is to push off White Supremacy.
Now, to answer your question in a much larger context, I'm one to believe that there are certain social roles adopted by a person doesn't have to be oppressive or limiting. For instance, I have a friend who is a woman and has deeply held radical feminist beliefs - but even still she loves adopting the role of the "Caretaker" - she loves to cook, clean, and essentially "mother" people.
I don't think this is problematic because she has been through a lot of critical thought to emancipate herself from the socialized necessity of fulfilling a traditional "Womans role", and does it because she finds it fulfilling.
So Anarchism - in regards to gender and sexuality, isn't about completely breaking down and doing away with these roles, but to emancipate ourselves from the socialized necessity of completing to be a proper or respected person. Her worth derives from doing something fulfilling for herself, and it just happens to be that what is fulfilling to her is often seen as the traditional "Woman's job" - she doesn't feel required to do this, but wants to because it makes her happy.
This is hell of a question; it's hard to pin it down. I don't think "White Culture" exists at all. I think it is a vacuum of power that seeks to normalize and commodify other cultures. It is the ultimate standard to become a "Normative" or respected person - no matter what race or culture. Min_Thamee unknowingly described this action very well:
This is someone who doesn't see the importance of historical or cultural roots, but one who simply thinks that all identity and culture is able to be picked apart and assimilated as wanted into the vacuum of culture (aka White Culture). Min_Thamee sees it as "Sharing" when what's really happening is that it is selective commodification and assimilation into a body that has never been subjected to, or connected to, the historical relevance.
White Culture is a vacuum, a negative space; it is something that renders useless and separates trajectories for its own usage. White Culture is a black hole that pulls in, rips apart, and separates any significance of other cultures to be dolled out and plugged into an assemblage of "Whiteness" or cultural negative space.
Thank you for your response.
I get what you're saying about gender. I think it's the use of the words "masculine" and "feminine" that I find problematic, but they're probably mostly unavoidable in the present social context.
I've read a little bit of that Anarchy Works book and in the beginning the author writes about primitive tribes, mostly in Africa as I recall, that have specific structures to maintain equality between men and women. I think the author might have just used them as examples disputing the necessity of patriarchy, but it seems to me that things like that, while they might signify gender equality, don't show an example of a genderless society but are rather very rigid gender roles. Regardless of how equal it all is it doesn't strike me as something anarchists (or communists) should uphold. What do you think?
With regards to "whiteness," I have some follow up questions. Is there a distinction between "white culture" and, let's say, Irish culture or German culture, or even American culture? Where might the skater subculture fit into "white culture?"
I saw a quote once, I think on a Wikipedia article, that said that white people should reject the white identity. What would that mean? I'm mostly asking because, although I have white skin (white parents etc.), the majority of my friends growing up and still today were non-white and as such I've never really identified as white myself, but at the same time I don't know if I ever rejected it.
A very knowledgeable post, but drawing this hard and fast distinction between "white culture" and "native culture" ignores the incredibly diversity present in each and is reductionist to the point of not really meaning anything.
Rather than the racial language a more accurate way of looking at it from an anarchist perspective would be to see more fluid groups of oppressor and oppressed.
See while I support this notion, I have to ask, why only the tribes? Surely we all have a right to carve out cultural identities and to resist oppression wherever we see it?
I think that it's correct that people recognise the existence of other cultures and people like you do a great job in making these things visible, but I'm uneasy with the essentialism.
While this seems true at face value (which is as far as your analysis goes) this isn't the case at all. I specifically cited how White people and Black people, and any other skin color, can also be Indian.
It isn't predicated off of race, but rather a shared cultural identity which is deeply rooted in historical trajectories.
They have the effects of genocide deeply ingrained in their very DNA and bones - this is the binding agent of Native Culture; if you read through the posts that I've been linking from r/IndianCountry you'd understand that. This is kind of a decent anecdote from a poster over there:
And then further below they discuss how there is a significant native population that is black - this isn't because of ancestry, but rather the shared culture experience of Native genocide.This shows how being "Native" isn't predicated off of race, but a shared cultural experience in the status quo and historically.What you're doing is you're making this an issue predicated off of race (maybe because you don't understand?), when that isn't the case at all.
This is exactly what I was addressing when I talked about the critique of non-native queer folk adopting native traditions and cultural rites. Just because Queer people were/are oppressed doesn't mean that we should view them (us, myself) in the same, or even similar light.
This is the homogenizing forces of Colonization that you are pushing towards; and I feel like I explained that very well. It is predicated off of historical and status quo roots of oppression - and though queer people are oppressed that doesn't mean that the impact is manifested in the same way.
It might feel like essentialism to people who don't understand or educated on the topic (once again, maybe like yourself - please go read the discussions in r/IndianCountry; it's fairly clear that you haven't taken the time to do so before talking about this). It isn't essentialism to coalesce into groups of queers because of the shared cultural experience of oppression and way of life - this is much the same, but has much deeper and profound roots in White Settler Colonialism (Of which Eurocentric queers were very clearly a part of, so it's incredibly problematic to lump them into a similar group of "oppressed peoples"). Just because one is oppressed in one way doesn't mean that they aren't the oppressors in an other.
I can't find that bit where you mentioned that.
Sure, Also reading through that link to the Intercontinental cry network, it's useful.
Just to be clear I'm absolutely behind ethnic groups protecting their culture. but I don't think this needs to be at the expense of sharing. I don't see a problem with a "non native" queer adopting a "native"queer identity. That's their choice if they feel the identity suits them.
I mean isn't the point that a lot of modern western queer identities are new conceptions anyway, things that had to be fought for, to be accepted. If someone discovers a queer identity through cultural meeting, then who is anyone to say they can't participate?
My bad. I said it in another comment, over in r/Anarchism, which is why you didn't see it. White people, black people, and anyone else can be Indian - but it isn't an adoption of culture because you like it, it is being born into and accepted into Native Culture. Not something that one can just make the decision to join.
Refer to my quote in my first comment on this thread. If you hold this belief all that means is that you don't have a problem with cultural colonization
No, it isn't. Like I said, just because one is oppressed doesn't mean they can't function as an oppressors in another way. One can't find liberation by coopting a tradition that has deep historical and cultural roots. Indian Queerness served a cultural role and wasn't the same as one simply being attracted to the same gender on not being cisnormative.
Two spirit and Berdache people held important positions in Native Culture and to simply "become two-spirit" without recognizing and taking on the cultural responsibilities that accompany it is commodification of Native Culture, and ultimately colonization. To do such a thing is just carrying on the tradition of White Settler Colonialism that our forefathers mantled.