thinking about how the burning of the library of alexandria is remembered as the most prominent historical symbol of the destruction of knowledge…but that’s nothing compared to the thousands of entire languages killed in America and Australia by the colonialists…
And the knowledge that went with it too. Indigenous Australians are always portrayed as hunter-gatherers, but they practiced agricuture and built permanent/semi-permanent settlements. There are even records by early European colonists of them baking bread from native grain crops which are no longer grown, and ploughing fields of yam daisies and vanilla lilies.
And after all that, we only remember them for spearing kangaroos and eating berries.
thinking about how the burning of the library of alexandria is remembered as the most prominent historical symbol of the destruction of knowledge…but that’s nothing compared to the thousands of entire languages killed in America and Australia by the colonialists…
I once read someone describe the extant corpus of Aztec codices as “like if all we had left to reconstruct European culture was the Pilgrims Progress and a book of psalms” and boy were they right
“…in his 1884 address on ‘The General Statistics of the British Empire’, Sir Richard Temple set out that over half of the annual revenue of the British national government came from taxing the labour and resources of those within empire, beyond the national state. That is, over half of the income at the disposal of the government in Westminster came from the land, labour, and resources of those who, today, are deemed to have no historically based claims here.”
— Gurminder K. Bhambra,
Brexit, Empire, and Decolonization
imo it goes a lot further than that – as utsa patnaik clearly explains it was the trade surplus from colonies, primarily India, that effectively guaranteed the entire british banking and currency system which in turn formed the centre of the global economy pre-great depression
A discussion about equality will never lead to anything substantial in a colonial society, until the colonial structures that govern the public and private sphere have been properly addressed, challenged and actively dismantled.
Colonialism is in and of itself not just a physical take-over of lands, but a mental subjugation of bodies, minds and voices as well. Colonialism is at its core made up of external and internalised racism, white privilege, physical and mental abuse, patriarchal violence, heteronormative supremacy, ableism and a disdain for anyone but the upper classes.
Until this is addressed, our discussions about equality and rights will be more or less useless.
The story of William Barak and the Wurundjeri people in Victoria is instructive. Adopting British language, customs, religion, and becoming successful farmers got them precisely nothing: the Victorian state punished them for their success by withholding the fruits of their labour, giving their farmland to white farmers and forcibly relocating them to poor land much further away from Melbourne.
So, update on the asshole who got himself killed by deliberately trespassing on Sentinel Island… He was not a missionary, but a travel blogger masquerading as a missionary to gain access and treat the Sentinelese as a zoo exhibit (whilst exposing them to germs, and encouraging other intruders).
Again: It is illegal for outside people to barge onto Sentinel Island (borders: they kinda work that way. And a lot of white Americans seem real excited about ‘protecting the border’ with deadly force. Just saying.)
The last outsiders to arrive kidnapped a bunch of Sentinelese people and also introduced deadly diseases, so they have more than enough reasons to use force to fend off invasion.
This asshole was warned multiple time not to go there.
He was going for some extreme travel adventure blog, which is the epitome of colonizer nonsense: disrespecting indigenous sovereignty, endangering indigenous lives, and treating indigenous people like a zoo exhibit, all so he could make a quick buck.
PS. Thanks for getting the right-wing Christian crowd all riled up against indigenous people with your missionary stunt, bro!
Wow, and it got worse.
The article does say he was a travel blogger, but nothing about him pretending to be a missionary. How do you know he wasn’t genuinely both?
Those things really don’t seem mutually exclusive. Sweet setup, coming from a certain mindset 😱
A few things about eugenics/sterilization in Canada from someone who knows too much about it for their own mental well being
(content warning for ableism, violence, misogyny and racism):
– Involuntary/coercive sterilization was one part of a multifaceted strategy of eugenics that included restrictive marriage laws, immigration restrictions, and segregation of people considered unfit for public space in institutions. Canada is still chock full of these structures of power, so it comes as no surprise that involuntary/coercive sterilizations continue.
– The biggest proponents of eugenics in its earliest form were political parties associated with “progressive” causes, including the “Famous Five” suffragettes and Tommy Douglas, who saw it as essential to preserving the integrity of the Canadian social safety net.
– Sterilization without consent was perfectly legal in Canada for 44 years, mainly in the Western provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. In Alberta alone, under the Sexual Sterilization Act, of the total number of individuals sterilized, 64.7% were women, 49.8% were from rural communities, 40.6% were unemployed, 20.55% were characterized as housewives, 25.7% were Indigenous (a disproportionately high number considering Indigenous people made up only 3.4% of the total population in Alberta at the time), and 70.6% were under the age of 20. Most of the individuals who were sterilized were characterized at the time of being approved for sterilization as being “mentally unfit”, but a number of cases involved patients “recovering from retardation” after sterilization.
– Eugenics emerged in the midst of a moral panic about sexual relationships between Indigenous women and white settler men, and exaggerated hysteria about Indigenous and “feeble minded” women engaging in sex trade work.
– The Alberta Eugenics Board disbanded in 1972. Many of the people who served on the board are still alive. There is no record of them ever facing any professional consequences for what they did, even though the Alberta government and apologized to some of the victims after Leilani Muir’s lawsuit. This includes John M. MacEachran, who co-founded the Canadian Psychological Association and was co-founder of the department of Psychology and Philosophy Department at the University of Alberta. Until 2003, an award in his name was given out by U of A, “honoring his accomplishments”.
I’m saying all this because the horrors of involuntary sterilization and colonialism are not an accident. They’re a part of Canada’s national fabric. They’re a part of what made Canada a state. And the fact that they continue today, long after the laws supporting them were formally struck down, should come as no surprise.
Written documentation of our past is often based on European colonists’ reactions to Cherokee gender, who thought that *all* of our genders were “variant.” Colonists likely saw female warriors or women in positions of leadership as living as men, even though these were acceptable—and important—roles for women in Cherokee gender systems. Trying to glean from colonial accounts which of these female-embodied people might now be called “Two-Spirit” and which were simply acting in accordance with Cherokee traditions for women is very difficult. We must remember these kinds of complexities as we continue to uncover our past and re-weave our present.
nobody ever talks about how saying non-binary genders don’t exist is racist as fuck
How?
many many many indigenous cultures have historically included more than two genders and to say that those genders do not exist is to say that those cultural traditions are invalid, and that only the imperialist gender binary is correct. which is racism.
Fuck off with this “binary gender is commanded by God” bullshit.
I have continually said that gender binarism is deeply rooted in white supremacy and colonialism for this reason and it’s why I often include discussions and mentions of racism while talking about gender.
lmao let’s stop acting like puritans were innocent people seeking asylum. they were colonizers seeking exploitation while telling themselves they’ve experienced some hardships too so they deserve it.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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