Love the note about Howard Zinn’s research. I find a lot of white people love to say we’re “romanticizing” Indigenous cultures when we talk about them being more egalitarian or in better harmony with nature, but to me it feels like an easy way to exclude yourself from any wrongdoing on your ancestor’s part. It’s also a very colonial mindset in itself, this idea that if we say something positive about pre-colonial cultures, we’re saying they’re perfect and colonial cultures are evil. There’s no nuance to it; every culture has its problems and every culture has its beauty. Thank you for sharing this research.
(Also, I posted a note on the Scottish Gaelic worldview and encountered some comments from men like I have mentioned above. But for the most part, people are curious to engage with the world in new ways.)
yes, I agree with you. It’s easy to dismiss the fact that while indigenous cultures were not perfect, they were highly functioning and had many aspects we could learn and benefit from emulating, including relating to nature differently. Of course, part of the whole colonial project is to make the colonized less-than to justify colonization. To acknowledge that imperialism destroyed cultures that were actually high functioning and in many ways advanced makes imperialist crimes even more horrendous.
Have you read The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow? They do a really excellent job of dispelling a lot of the imperial myths, including showing how most of the French Enlightenment philosophy was stolen from Indigenous peoples in North America that were brought to France specifically to debate these men! They come in with ample evidence… I haven’t finished the book, but it’s great so far.
Wow! No, I will check it out! At the end of the day, imperialism can run circles around itself trying to justify what it did --and still does--but it's like putting lipstick on a pig. The reality is, it's pure theft. It's one nation/people stealing from another: their land, their resources, their people (via slavery, famine, genocide).
Absolutely! First they brought Mohawk leaders to debate philosophy in France, and then basically stole their ideas (but with more emphasis on individualism than the community-centric Iroquoian nations, of course). Then they shifted the narrative to make them look like barbicans, erasing what they could of the original conversations. And so began their justification for oppressing “less civilized” people.
Love the note about Howard Zinn’s research. I find a lot of white people love to say we’re “romanticizing” Indigenous cultures when we talk about them being more egalitarian or in better harmony with nature, but to me it feels like an easy way to exclude yourself from any wrongdoing on your ancestor’s part. It’s also a very colonial mindset in itself, this idea that if we say something positive about pre-colonial cultures, we’re saying they’re perfect and colonial cultures are evil. There’s no nuance to it; every culture has its problems and every culture has its beauty. Thank you for sharing this research.
(Also, I posted a note on the Scottish Gaelic worldview and encountered some comments from men like I have mentioned above. But for the most part, people are curious to engage with the world in new ways.)
yes, I agree with you. It’s easy to dismiss the fact that while indigenous cultures were not perfect, they were highly functioning and had many aspects we could learn and benefit from emulating, including relating to nature differently. Of course, part of the whole colonial project is to make the colonized less-than to justify colonization. To acknowledge that imperialism destroyed cultures that were actually high functioning and in many ways advanced makes imperialist crimes even more horrendous.
Have you read The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow? They do a really excellent job of dispelling a lot of the imperial myths, including showing how most of the French Enlightenment philosophy was stolen from Indigenous peoples in North America that were brought to France specifically to debate these men! They come in with ample evidence… I haven’t finished the book, but it’s great so far.
Wow! No, I will check it out! At the end of the day, imperialism can run circles around itself trying to justify what it did --and still does--but it's like putting lipstick on a pig. The reality is, it's pure theft. It's one nation/people stealing from another: their land, their resources, their people (via slavery, famine, genocide).
Absolutely! First they brought Mohawk leaders to debate philosophy in France, and then basically stole their ideas (but with more emphasis on individualism than the community-centric Iroquoian nations, of course). Then they shifted the narrative to make them look like barbicans, erasing what they could of the original conversations. And so began their justification for oppressing “less civilized” people.
Incredible… and not! So much has been stolen… even ideas.
I really enjoyed this article. When I married in New Orleans our wedding cake had 'Le chéile go deo' written on top. 🌹
Tá sé go hálainn.