The numbering system of this decolonial journey is necessarily arbitrary, as I don’t know how the journey will unfold. In part because I try to write from a place of the Spirit. I thought I had completed a review of this country’s colonial history. But as I look back, I now see certain things more clearly—or at least differently—as a result of what I’ve been learning.
One thing I’ve noticed is that most of the discussion about colonialism in this country focuses on White land theft, and not much on the institution of slavery, despite the significant contribution of enslaved labor to the economic wealth of the country then and now, to generational wealth. The current prison-industrial complex (PIC) continues this by profiting from prison labor.
The reason for this focus is that the initial and primary colonialism White Europeans brought to this land was settler colonialism.
Settler Colonialism
Settler colonialism is a logic and structure of displacement by settlers, using colonial rule, over an environment for replacing it and its indigenous peoples with settlements and the society of the settlers.
Settler-Colonialism, Wikipedia
Extractive Colonialism
I’ve done a lot of work related to extractive colonialism and the ongoing fights related to oil, mineral, and, increasingly, water extraction.
Planter Colonialism
Planter Colonialism “Colonizers institute mass production of a single crop, such as sugar, coffee, cotton, or rubber. Though a minority, members of the ruling class might belong to an empire that enables their political, legal, and administrative control. Their labor demands cannot be satisfied by the native population, so they import African slaves or indentured laborers, as with the “coolie” and “blackbirding” trades.” A Typology of Colonialism by Nancy Shoemaker, Perspectives on History, Oct 2015
The “other” slavery
Native American slavery “is a piece of the history of slavery that has been glossed over,” Fisher said. “Between 1492 and 1880, between 2 and 5.5 million Native Americans were enslaved in the Americas in addition to 12.5 million African slaves.” Colonial enslavement of Native Americans included those who surrendered, too, News from Brown University, Feb 15, 2027
Indigenous Elimination
- Forced Removal: Militarily displacing Indigenous communities from their ancestral lands to clear territory for settlement, as exemplified by the Trail of Tears.
- Cultural Assimilation: Policies designed to destroy Indigenous cultures, languages, and social structures, most notoriously through the system of residential and boarding schools, with the aim of “killing the Indian to save the man”.
- Biological Assimilation: Encouraging or forcing intermarriage to “breed out” Indigeneity over generations.
- Administrative Erasure: Using legal and bureaucratic tools like blood quantum laws and flawed census records (such as the Dawes Rolls) to define Indigenous peoples out of existence, thereby terminating treaty obligations and land claims.
