I touched a nerve
So yesterday’s newsletter about planning for the future upset a sizeable portion of my small readership, enough that I got multiple complaints. I was told that it, and my newsletter so far, have been “unnecessarily antagonistic” by multiple people.
To everyone who felt the same flurry of emotions but didn’t encourage me to talk about something else: thank you. But the response makes me think, maybe I should explain what this newsletter is. After all, some of you got subscribed automatically from Patreon, and others might not have read the about page.
That page encourages a development of knowledge about certain topics, among them decolonization, both through this newsletter, conversations we have, and external resources. To help y’all with that, I’m going to share some items tagged decolonization from my reading list. Some of these will be academic, some casual; some very broad and some specific.
A Brief Definition of Decolonization and Indigenization, from Indigenous Corporate Training
Native Minds, Hearts, Spirits, Beings, Knowings: Journey to Liberation, Decolonization, Reawakening
White Allies, Let’s Be Honest About Decolonization, Kyle Powys Whyte
What does decolonization mean? Our panel debates the buzzword
DECOLONIZING OUR MINDS AND ACTIONS, by Waziyatawin and Michael Yellow Bird
What is decolonization and why does it matter?, BY ERIC RITSKES
Decolonizing Means Many Things to Many People”—Four Practitioners Discuss Decolonizing Design
Coyote is not a metaphor: On decolonizing, (re)claiming and (re)naming “Coyote”
Re-envisioning resurgence: Indigenous pathways to decolonization and sustainable self-determination
Decolonizing cultural heritage of Indigenous people and their knowledge from images in global films
Decolonization is a global project: From Palestine to the Americas
Putting feathers on our words: Kaona as a decolonial aesthetic practice in Hawaiian literature
Mapurbe: Spiritual Decolonization and the Word in the Chilean Mierdópolis
Learning from the land: Indigenous land based pedagogy and decolonization
Paper Rocket Productions: A decolonizing epistemology of young Indigenous filmmakers
Decolonial options and artistic/aestheSic entanglements: An interview with Walter Mignolo
Mapping interpretations of decolonization in the context of higher education
Hip hop and nueva canción as decolonial pedagogies of epistemic justice
Tensional decolonization and public order in Western Nigeria, 1957-1960
Towards the ‘tangible unknown’: Decolonization and the Indigenous future
Strategies for Settler Decolonization: Decolonial Pedagogies in a Popular Music Analysis Course
Want to understand the decolonisation debate? Here's your reading list
Decolonization Not Inclusion: Indigenous Resistance to American Settler Colonialism
The Political Economy of Imperialism, Decolonization and Development
Ecological Effects of Decolonisation Strategies in Intensive Care (RGNOSIS)
Now, that might seem like one hell of a reading list. But before you get too tense about the number of resources (nevermind the length,) I want you to mull over a few questions:
How many resources have you read that present an uncritically colonial view of our world in the past year? Nearly every political, economic, tech, social report, it’s all written with the assumptions that colonial society is better, without ever even acknowledging what it’s better than.
Is there really something more important to do with your time than emancipate yourself from your dependence on the contemporary kyriarchy; colonialism?
Do you know of a better framework for conducting that emancipation?
Too many, probably not, and probably not, are the likely answers. So click around, find some sub-topics that interest you enough to give a foothold, and happy learning!
(And as you read know: even decolonization is now being criticized by Indigenous land defenders for having become a colonized philosophy: this is an active process of education and exploration of our world, not a static thing you can memorize, enact, and move on from. Like Tuck and Yang famously said, decolonization is not a metaphor.)