Quakers have a deep spiritual obligation and need to confront the historic and ongoing injustices of the Christian colonial capitalist violence of this country, as my Native friends refer to it.
I’m now switching from reviewing my decolonial journey to exploring what this means in practical terms.
Colonization of this land
- The Christian church embraced settling land not occupied by Christians
- European settlers successfully colonized this land, now known as the United States
- The land was enclosed and stolen by settlers
- Settler genocide nearly eradicated the Indigenous populations
- Churches, including Quakers, implemented the Indian Boarding schools to forcibly assimilate Native children into the now dominant settler culture
- The institution of chattel slavery was used to provide stolen labor for the capitalist system
- This created an interlocking system of Christian colonial capitalist violence
- These interlocked systems are extremely resistant to change, mutually supporting each other
- A holistic approach to decolonizing is therefore required
- LANDBACK is the necessary expression of Integrity. It is the only honest response to a history built on stolen land, moving beyond symbolic acknowledgment to material restitution.
- Mutual Aid is the necessary expression of Equality. It creates communities of care that dismantle the hierarchies of capitalism and white supremacy, affirming in practice that of God in every person by ensuring their needs are met through solidarity, not charity.
- Abolition is the necessary expression of Peace. It is a commitment to dismantle the internal instruments of state violence—the police and prisons that enforce colonial order—and to build a world where conflict is resolved through justice and healing, not coercion.
Decolonial Journey posts compiled
I’ve collated the eighteen blog posts of my decolonial journey to this point in this PDF file. The next phase, of which this post is the first, will be about a decolonial path for Quakers.
