My experience is that most white Quakers in this country believe colonialism is a thing of the past. Which is the greatest obstacle to creating change. A graphic from the Great Plains Action Society (GPAS) says “don’t be a colonizer.” The graphic also explains how to do so, by “working collectively toward mutual well-being to end capitalist inequities.”
Why change now?
I pray and write a lot about the injustices of Christian colonial capitalist violence. But the greatest argument for decolonization is the horrible shape we and Mother Earth are in after more than five hundred years of living this way in this country. The consequences of the abuse of Mother Earth are just beginning to emerge. We have rapidly fallen into an authoritarian state. Our systems of checks and balances failed. Civil liberties are in tatters. Our colonial violence is felt across the globe. We continue funding the killing of Palestinian children and families.
As the world stumbles toward climate tipping points, a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that among the most powerful defenders of nature are not satellites or carbon markets, but people – Indigenous peoples.
From the rainforests of the Amazon to the boreal forests of Canada, Indigenous stewardship may be one of the most high-impact and cost-effective strategies to mitigate climate change, preserve biodiversity, and disrupt environmental crimes.
Indigenous peoples occupy, use, or manage over a quarter of the Earth’s surface, including many of its most ecologically intact regions. These territories often overlap with areas of high carbon density and biodiversity richness.
Where land rights are formally recognized, deforestation rates are consistently two to three times lower than in surrounding lands. In Brazil, for instance, forests inside demarcated Indigenous territories experience dramatically less forest loss than non-designated lands, a pattern echoed across Peru, Colombia, Mexico, and Canada.
Indigenous Stewardship Is The Ignored Climate Solution By Robert Muggah, Intercontinental Cry. August 27, 2025
Economic practices are very often at the root of social injustices. While there are innumerable examples of inequities and discriminatory practices related to wages, access to housing, education, medical, and other services, we have failed to come to grips with some foundational economic injustices. We live and work on land that was outright stolen from Native Americans. Our buildings and infrastructure were built with the labor of enslaved African Americans and other people of color, with the resulting extensive benefits and profits going to white males. We will not be able to make progress regarding racial (including indigenous) injustice until we apologize for these wrongs and find ways to redistribute the wealth and resources that were created as a result.
Response to Social and Economic Queries, Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) 2018
Indigenous Stewardship
Fundamental to decolonization is to center Indigenous voices and leadership.
We address the trauma that indigenous peoples and the earth face and work to prevent further Christian colonial capitalist violence by building power in indigenous communities through rematriation, healing justice, and building a regenerative economy.
Indigenous Peoples in the US and around the world have created a culture of resistance, built on the frontlines, that is now a way of life. It can be found in our dancing, singing, clothing, art, and in our political motivations. For instance, the American Indian Movement (A.I.M.) song was created out of the Red Power Movement and is sung at many of our cultural events and in our movement spaces, which are often one and the same. It began with the need to protect our homes and way of life from settler invaders, colonial militias, and imperialist governments. There is over a 500-year history of Indigenous resistance to the violent nature of colonial-capitalist genocidal and extractive practices. As stewards of the land, our ancestors saw right away that settler invaders, who were directly harming us, were also harming the environment and throwing the ecosystem off balance. The resistance is ongoing as long as genocide and colonization are perpetuated by the nation-state and its settler citizens. To be in a constant state of resistance is traumatic, hence why we suffer from intergenerational and historical trauma. Yet, it is necessary to protect our land, our people, and our ways from colonial-capitalist forces.
Great Plains Action Society’s Theory of Change, Sikowis Nobiss
