THERE'S NO DECOLONIZATION: enquiring into cultural genocide
Bear Mother Halayt
20 x 16 Mixed Media acrylic transfer and paua shell inlay
I first learned of the word decolonization when in graduate school. It made sense at the time. It was clearly a confrontation of the injustice and wrongdoing in colonization. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. spoke out against injustice in oppression as have many artists throughout the generations.
While researching ancestral law through sm'algyax (Tsimshian language), I came to understand that decolonization does not exist. The prefix "de" means to reverse an act.
Oppression is a spiritual act first
Colonization is an act of oppression
It is not possible to reverse a spiritual act
A spiritual act can only be transformed
When one claims they are going to decolonize methodologies, they write or speak to the belief that if one points out wrongdoing, it rights the wrongdoing—reverses it. Regardless of how true the confrontation may be, change is something that comes because one releases one's judgements, beliefs, hatred, compulsion to be right, greed for power, releases their conditioning and want for control to "The Good." It is only when one releases their desire for power that one finds power. True power.
