“Decolonization is not a metaphor” is a fascinating read. Another good read is, “Columbus and Other cannibals,” published by Jack D. Forbes in 1978 – but it is not for the faint of heart.
Sort of along the lines of one of the first pieces I ever wrote that got me in hot water: In 1969-1970 I did a review of Vine Deloria’s “Custer Died for Your Sins.” It completely, and at the time, irreverently savaged not just policies perpetrated upon the first peoples by the U.S. government, but also by the church and NGO aid organizations.
By Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, & Society, Vol 1, No 1 (2012)
Our goal in this article is to remind readers what is unsettling about decolonization. Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools. The easy adoption of decolonizing discourse by educational advocacy and scholarship, evidenced by the increasing number of calls to “decolonize our schools,” or use “decolonizing methods,” or, “decolonize student thinking”, turns decolonization into a metaphor. As important as their goals may be, social justice, critical methodologies, or approaches that decenter settler perspectives have objectives that may be incommensurable with decolonization. Because settler colonialism is built upon an entangled triad structure of settler-native-slave, the decolonial desires of white, non-white, immigrant, postcolonial, and oppressed people, can similarly be entangled in resettlement, reoccupation, and…
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