"Colonialism was motivated by the promise of plundering the environment and subjugating populations. And the pervasive and persistent institutions of colonialism make it far more challenging to address the climate crisis and implement solutions, especially in a just and equitable way."
​~ Anuradha Varanasi, How Colonialism Spawned and Continues to Exacerbate the Climate Crisis

healing the harms we've suffered and caused

A critical part of building a livable future for all involves learning, unlearning, and confronting difficult truths about our past. It is only when we dispel our myths and take an honest, critical eye to our stories that we can authentically begin the work of reconciliation, reparation, rebuilding, and realizing a truly livable future for all.
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Healing our histories means deconstructing the assumptions, preferences, and values that derive from a colonial way of thinking. ​For many of us, that means acknowledging our own 'settler privilege' inherited from white European ancestors. For people of color, it requires recognizing internalized hierarchies of privilege and power that cause us to see ourselves and our heritage as inferior. Friends with multi-ethnic backgrounds may contend with a complicated mix of internalized privilege and oppression. And, for many of us, healing our histories requires unlearning a deeply ingrained attitude of dominion over Creation. 

Simply put, a 'colonial mentality' shows an internalized desirability for whiteness and cultural values from Western Europe or the USA, and disregard for that which originates from a non-white cultural milieux. These sentiments trace back to an era when Europeans wrote about indigenous people in the Americas, Africa, the Middle East and Asia using the terms “savage,” “wild” and “uncivilized” to describe their encounters.  This European sense of cultural and biological superiority led to the so-called “civilizing mission” to save the "uncivilized" races from themselves. And it served to justify imperialism, occupation, slavery, patriarchy, and an attitude that land can be taken and exploited and its resources extracted at will.  

It was William Faulkner who wrote that "the past is never dead. It's not even past."  The ghost of colonization hovers over those of us in colonized countries, shaping our identities and influencing our collective consciousness, including our relationship to Creation.

And it was James Baldwin who said, "not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."  Healing our histories begins with radical self-reflection. It involves looking at not just this lifetime, but at the heritage of those who came before us and releasing the internalized beliefs that do not serve our Beloved Community or our Beloved Earth.

This inner work is for everybody--those who believe their ancestors were colonized and those whose ancestors were colonizers. Because we are all living together in a deeply colonized world.

Queries
Do I allow old paradigms to dominate my mind and thereby prevent progress to a just world?
How am I actively challenging stereotyping and colonial mentality when I encounter it?
How have I sought to become aware of the history of colonization in my local area?

For further inquiry & inspiration
Click on the images, below, for links

An Excellent Article

Interview with asfc staff

A helpful podcast

This article from YES Magazine, titled White Allies, Let's be Honest about Decolonization, is a thoughtful invitation to those of us who are White, with what the author calls "settler privilege" to examine our motives for and assumptions about decolonization, especially where indigenous people are concerned.
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for a deeper dive:
​A Course on Re-Membering

This is a learning community founded by former PacYM Friend Sara Jolena Wolcott, M.Div., with a mission to unsettle our colonial past while reweaving ourselves with all Creation, our more-than human world. Sara's ReMembering Course connects participants with their own histories of colonization, offering a safe container for unravelling those deeply embedded cultural assumptions and constructs built on a foundation of imperialism, colonialism, oppression and separation. The course re-originates climate change and other aspects of cultural dis-ease with the Doctrine of Discovery and the Great European Witch Hunts. It is a space for seekers from across spiritual traditions, and several Quakers have been greatly enriched through taking it. Truly a life changing and paradigm shifting course for anyone willing to commit the time, intention and willingness to be changed. 

Read Decolonizing our Hearts and Minds as People of Faith, a very personal and inspiring interview with Denise Altvater, AFSC staff and coordinator of the Wabanaki Youth Program in Maine.  This is Part 2 of a 5-part interview with Denise, with links to the other parts, all of which are enlightening, first-person testimonies. 

Watch​ the doctrine of discovery

Vatican documents issued during the fifteenth century created global patterns of domination, leading to the current ecological crisis.  The doctrine of discovery refers to a principle in public international law under which, when a nation "discovers land it directly acquires rights on that land. See the trailer or rent the documentary by clicking above.

For a deep and spiritual encounter with this subject, listen to Healing the Colonial Mind from Dr. Larry Ward, a senior teacher in Buddhist Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village tradition, and author of America's Racial Karma.  The podcast is on the website, For the Wild, a media organization that offers access to eco-ideas that "exist outside of dominant culture and consumer conditioning."

An excellent book

An insightful look at the historical damages early colonizers of America caused and how their descendants may recognize and heal the harm done to the earth and the native peoples.
Inherited Silence tells the story of how a beloved piece of land in California’s Napa Valley fared during the onslaught of colonization and how it fares now in the drought, development, and wildfires that are the consequences of the colonial mind.