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Colonization Quotes

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Colonization Quotes

“...and once people start to believe in these categories, their imagination becomes domesticated. Since capitalism doesn't only shape lives but also identities, they begin to critique themselves using the system’s own logic—feeling guilt for not being “productive,” anxiety for not being “attractive,” or shame for not being “confident and sociable.”

ValuesInfluenceIdentityCapitalismUnconsciousNormNormalityColonizationSelf HateAbsorbtion
Author:Sov8840
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“... anyway, the traders didn't want them as much. Just winter-coat buffalo robes, as many as we could bring in, so that we had to imagine all the napikwans in their big camps huddled in the buffalo robes, making it look like the buffalo never went away, they just stayed in place, let the buildings and roads come up around them until they forgot they were grass eaters, started standing in line at banks and mailing letters.”

WestColonizationBuffaloBisonIndian Wars
Book:The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
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“Calling people out their names is a bad habit the people of European descent seem to have. The one that takes the rag off the bush is how they went all the way to Africa and called nature out of its name...Victoria Falls, Leopoldville, Johannesburg, Lake Victoria, Lake Rudolf, Lake Albert, etc. The W.F.'s that came here did the same thing with the indigenous people living here...called them Indians; and years later missionaries, government officials, census takers, etc., "tidied up their records and account books by arbitrarily shortening or changing the names of their charges." "He Who Causes Fear" and "Brave Chief" suddenly became Indian Joe and Bob.”

IndianNative AmericanIndigenousColonizationBoarding Schools
Book:Thursdays and Every Other Sunday Off: A Domestic Rap by Verta Mae
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“The idea of discovery and consequent possession is used by those with neither the intelligence nor sensitivity to see the value in lives other than their own. Anyway, there is no need to possess anything when there is access to everything. It is only when someone says that your mother belongs to them that there is a problem.”

ColonizationAboriginalAboriginal CultureColonisationAustralian LiteratureAustralian HistoryAustralian AuthorAboriginal AustraliansAboriginesLand Rights
Book:Nanima: Spiritual Fiction
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“In early-colonial Australia, invading colonisers regularly marvelled at the local environment’s park-like aspect, counting themselves multiply blessed that ‘nature’ (including divine providence) should have come to furnish them with ready-made grazing runs. In fact, the Australian landscape’s benign aspect was the cumulative consequence of millennia of Indigenous management, in particular the use of fire to reduce undergrowth and to contain spontaneous conflagrations within local limits. Within a few years of Europeans taking over the country and discontinuing Native fire-management practices, the current cycle of massive bushfire disasters was set in train. The land that settlers seize is already value-added. There is no such thing as wilderness, only depopulation.”

AustraliaColonizationSettler ColonialismIndigenous Australians
Book:Traces of History: Elementary Structures of Race
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“My parents both arrived in New York City after World War II, at different times but for the same reason the search for work. They left a country they loved, but where they could not make a living. About half a million Puerto Ricans made the same journey fleeing economic despair, the result of the US colonization of the island. Government officials blamed the people for the disastrous economic situation claiming that the problem was "overpopulation." They promoted the mass exodus of Puerto Ricans and implemented policies that sterilized thousands of poor and working women. The Young Lords are the sons and daughters of this Great Migration. As young people growing up in the United States, we witnessed how our parents were exploited, degraded, and humiliated. We felt their suffering, and we too had experiences with poverty and racism. All of this propelled us into action to fight for justice.”

JusticeUnited StatesUs HistoryColonizationPuerto RicoSterilizationGreat MigrationYoung LordsPuerto Rican History
Book:Through the Eyes of Rebel Women: The Young Lords, 1969-1976
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“France is much more colonized than it ever colonized itself, France has not really colonized the world, it conquered, it was an imperial power, but accept in Canada in the 17th and 18th century, and in Algeria, it didn't have a very strong transfer of population, it was more like conquest, an imperial conquest, for instance in black Africa there where very few French people, there where no French cities or things like that, there was no large transfer of population, and of course transfer of population, is the very essence, since the Greeks of what colonization really was, the word colonization when it first appeared in western civilization, means the transfer of Greek people to Sicily for instance, and so France is much more deeply colonized because it's a demographic colonization.”

FranceColonizationRenaud Camus
Author:Renaud Camus
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“Many of us understand that America was built on the brutality of slavery and the looting of Indigenous land. Fewer recognize the colonization of Mexico by the United States as a third pillar in the creation of present-day America. The first colonization of Mexico was of course by Spain. But the second colonization of my people came at the hands of the United States during the Mexican-American War. In school we learn of it as Manifest Destiny, as the God-given right of white people to steal native land. The result was not only the taking of land...but the reluctant acquisition of Mexicans. ...The annexation of Texas into the United States and a dispute over where the Texas border should be drawn gave President James Polk an excuse to loot more Mexican land...There were between 80,000 and 100,000 Mexicans living in the land stolen by the United States. Polk wanted the land, but not the Mexicans on it. They were never immigrants; they didn't come to the United States or cross the border; the border crossed them. After the war, the Mexico-U.S. border was carefully drawn to keep as many Mexicans out as possible, a purpose it still serves. But the border never stopped out roots from growing on both sides.”

American HistoryMexicanUs HistoryColonizationManifest DestinyMexican American
Book:You Sound Like a White Girl: The Case for Rejecting Assimilation
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“Mohammed started telling me about some of the most horrific stories he encountered in Mosul during the ISIL years, including when he worked at a local NGO as a caseworker. ‘How can you not be traumatized and suffer sleepless nights when dealing with a story of a 13-year old boy who was escaping for safety with his parents and sister from the right to the left side of Mosul, while it was being liberated by the Iraqi army?’ Mohammed paused, lit a cigarette, rolled down the car window, and continued, ‘as they were running, the father wanted to make sure the road was clear, so as soon as he ventured out, he got a bullet in his head from a sniper. The mother ran to him crying and screaming. She, too, got a bullet in her head. As the little boy and his sister tried to escape, the girl was shot, but she didn’t die. After hiding in a nearby building for a while, they came out and took their parents’ bodies to bury them in that same empty building they took as a shelter. Once done, as they were leaving, the little girl got yet another bullet and died this time. The 13-year old boy survived, but did he really survive? Can even a person who hears this story survive it?”

WarViolenceMiddle EastIraq WarColonizationWar CrimesWar StoriesUs Foreign Policy
Author:Louis Yako
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“In the early 1900s, while colonization continued, the original Mexican population of the Southwest was greatly increased by an immigration the continues today. This combination of centuries-old roots and relatively new ones gives the Mexican-American people a rich and varied cultural heritage.”

ImmigrationMexicoColonizationMexican AmericansSouthwestern UsMexican American History
Book:De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century
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“I wanted to devour this woman's dignity. Congratulations for what exactly? For having a family who made it through genocide? For being part of the slim population of surviving Native Americans post-colonization? An anger simmered in my throat, begging to be let loose on this stupid woman who was there to simply enjoy her vacation. How dare she remain blissfully unaware of the modern existence of Native Americans when all she had seen were movies making us look like history? As mad as I was, I knew it wasn't her fault and I couldn't muster up the energy to boil my anger into a response.”

NativeGenocideNative AmericanIndigenousUs HistoryArizonaColonizationEuropean HistoryEuropeanBiological Warfare
Book:Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity
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“How then can the US society come to terms with its past? How can it acknowledge responsibility? The late Native historian Jack Forbes always stressed that while living persons are not responsible for what their ancestors did, they are responsible for the society they live in, which is a product of that past. Assuming this responsibility provides a means of survival and liberation. Everyone and everything in the world is affected, for the most part negatively, by US dominance and intervention, often violently through direct military means or through proxies.”

Human RightsGenocideUs HistoryColonizationEmpireIndigenous Peoples
Author:Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
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“As the leaves randomly fell, she contemplated how they sacrificially gave up their essence to sustain new life. Or was it the tree’s sacrifice? Each leaf was a part of Gaia’s play. Their final act: to decompose so a new level of soil could be made, an earthen writing tablet for the next layer of history to be recorded. One generation became the groundwork for the next. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Nothing was exempt, not even the leaves.”

LegacyMarsColonizationChroniclesLeafWillowFillionBiodome
Book:Legacy
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“There are an estimated 258 million migrants around the world, and many of us are migrating to countries that previously colonized and imperialized us. We have a human right to move, and governments should serve that right, not limit it. The unprecedented movement of people - what some call a "global migration crisis" - is, in reality, a natural progression of history. Yes, we are here because we believe in the promise of the American Dream - the search for a better life, the challenge of dreaming big. But we are also here because you were there - the cost of American imperialism and globalization, the impact of economic policies and political decisions.”

ColonialismImperialismGlobalizationMigrationColonizationMigrantsMigrant CrisisGlobal MigrateGlobal Migration
Book:Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen
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“... this system we call the transnational world order is just feudalism all over again, a set of rules that is anti-ecologic, it does not give back but rather enriches a floating international elite while impoverishing everything else, and so of course the so-called rich elite are in actuality poor as well, disengaged from real human work and therefore from real human accomplishment, parasitical in the most precise sense, and yet powerful too as parasites that have taken control can be, sucking the gifts of human work away from their rightful recipients which are the seven generations, and feeding on them while increasing the repressive powers that keep them in place!”

PowerAccomplishmentColonialismUtopiaWorld OrderColonizationPolitical EconomyFeudalism
Book:Red Mars
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“European colonists cleared or damaged bush because they did not value it and introduced to more than sixty-five per cent of the continent mono-cultures of non-Australian species they did value... it is our southern Eurasian ancestors... who are actually nomads because we overpopulate... damage land in the process, then wage wars on neighbours to take their land in order to continue to over-populate, and on it goes.”

PoliticsSustainabilityAncestorsColonizationOverpopulationEuropean HistoryAustralian HistoryUnsustainableIntroduced Species
Author:Michael Archer
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“I believe in han. There's no perfect English-language equivalent for this Korean emotion, but it's some combination of strife or unease, sadness, and resentment, born from the many historical injustices and indignities endured by our people. It's a term that came into use in the twentieth century after the Japanese occupation of Korea, and it describes this characteristic sorrow and bitterness that Koreans seem to possess wherever they are in the world. It is transmitted from generation to generation and defines much of the art, literature, and cinema that comes out of Korean culture.”

SorrowResentmentStrifeColonizationUneaseKorean Culture
Book:Eat a Peach
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“When writing on the subject of civilization, one must understand that the ability to read or write a European language does not create a superior civilization. Nor does the ability to point exploding sticks that cause instantaneous death or injury, or to launch missiles that could blow the world apart, provide a moral basis to declare one’s culture more civilized than another. The question to ask when judging the values and merits of a civilization must always be: “How does the civilization respond to the human needs of its population?” By this standard, because they created social and political systems that ensured personal liberty, justice and social responsibility, most Amerindian civilizations must be given very high marks. When making an unbiased assessment, and comparing the values of early American civilizations with those of European civilizations, one cannot but find that the suppression and wanton destruction of American civilizations by European civilizations was in many ways a case of inferior civilizations overcoming superior ones. This is especially true in the area of respect for human rights. Although they were not as technologically advanced as the Europeans were by 1492, many Amerindian Nations possessed democratic political practices that were light years ahead.”

DecolonizationColonizationIndigenous PeoplesTurtle Island
Book:We Were Not the Savages: First Nations History ? Collision Between European and Native American Civilizations
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“August wanted to hand the papers back and to tell them everything, draw them close and whisper that their lives had turned out wrong, that she and her family were meant to be powerful, not broken, tell them that something bad happened before any of them was born. Tell them that something was stolen from a place inland, from the five hundred acres where her people lived. She wanted to tell them that the world was all askew and she thought it was because of the artefacts, that she thought they should understand it was all so urgent now, that they knew truths now tell them that she wasn’t extinct, that they didn’t need the exhibition after all.”

HistoryColonizationAustralian HistoryIndigenous Australians
Book:The Yield
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“Some say the idea that the world's trajectory is driven by conquest followed by innovation and intensification is satisfying to the Western mind because of our psychological dependence on our imperialist history. But if we give consideration to the idea that change can be generated by the spirit, and through that by political action, the stability of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures might be more readily explained.”

CultureHistoryProgressSustainabilityImperialismColonizationIndigenous AustraliansAustralian Aboriginal
Book:Dark Emu
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“THE MIDDLE OF WHAT? EAST OF WHERE? THE REGION’S VERY name is based on a European view of the world, and it is a European view of the region that shaped it. The Europeans used ink to draw lines on maps: they were lines that did not exist in reality and created some of the most artificial borders the world has seen. An attempt is now being made to redraw them in blood.”

BordersMiddle EastGeographyInstabilityColonizationNation States
Book:Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics
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“The journey of a thousands suns begins today. Some may question whether the journey is worth the sacrifice and danger. To them I say that no sacrifice is too dear and no danger too great to ensure the very survival of our human species. What will we find when we arrive at our new homes? That's an open question. For a century, deep-space probes have reported alien lifeforms, but thus far none of which we recognize as intelligent beings. Are we the only biological intelligence in the universe? Perhaps our definition of intelligence is too narrow, too specio-centric. For, are not trees intelligent, who know to shed their leaves at the end of summer? Are not turtles intelligent, who know when to bury themselves in mud under ice? Is not all life intelligent, that knows how to pass its vital essence to new generations? Because half of intelligence resides in the body, be it plant or animal. I now commend these brave colonists to the galaxy, to join their minds and bodies to the community of living beings they will encounter there, and to establish our rightful place among the stars.”

HumanitySingularityColonizationAisExtra Terrestrial LifeGeneration Ships
Book:Mind Over Ship
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“Hand Watches” I opened the drawer where I store old keepsakes and tokens. My eyes paused on hand watches with dead batteries, frozen in time… Gifts from teachers and friends— offered to honor my accomplishments, to praise my respect for time. It never occurred to them, or to me, that Time could die of a heart attack— that it would cease to matter the day my homeland was occupied and destroyed. The day the plunderers —both foreign and within— colluded to burn and erase all that was beautiful. Since then, I’ve refused to wear hand watches, and I never will until my people reclaim their Time and dignity. And when that day comes, Time will no longer matter. For then, I will become— a butterfly, a sparrow, a daffodil or an orange blossom, perhaps an apricot blossom on a branch, an unstoppable stream of water flowing beyond time and timing. In that same drawer, I found pens that had run dry, like mummified corpses. In a moment of despair, a lightning bolt of realization struck me— leaving behind a terrifying question: What if this is a wound that no amount of time can heal— a cause so vast that all the world’s ink cannot write its cure?”

WarTimeLossExileInvasionRefugeesColonizationArabic PoetryDisplacementArabic Literature
Book:سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]
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“Colonized painting, for instance, is balanced between poles. From excessive submission to Europe resulting in depersonalization, it passes to such a violent return to self that it is obnoxious and esthetically illusory. The right balance not being found, the self-accusation continues. Before and during the revolt, the colonized always considers the colonizer as a model or as an antithesis. He continues to struggle against him. He was torn between what he was and what he wanted to be, and now he is making of himself. Nonetheless, the painful discord with himself continues. In order to witness the colonized's complete cure, his alienation must completely cease. We must await the complete disappearance of colonization--including the period of revolt.”

ColonialismColonizationEmpireColonizerColonizedAlbert Memme
Book:The Colonizer and the Colonized
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“Sarah (Winnemucca) is best known for her 1883 autobiography, Life among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Theirs Claims, the first memoir writen and published by a Native American woman. Her story begins; 'I was born somewhere near 1844, but am not sure of the precise time. I was a very small child when the first white people came to our country. They came like a lion, yes, like a roaring lion, and have continued to do so ever since, and I have never forgotten their first coming.”

Native AmericanColonizationRoaring LionPaiute NationSarah Winnemucca
Book:Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories from History—Without the Fairy-Tale Endings
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“Berlin of 1884 was effected through the sword and the bullet. But the night of the sword and the bullet was followed by the morning of the chalk and the blackboard. The physical violence of the battlefield was followed by the psychological violence of the classroom. But where the former was visibly brutal, the latter was visibly gentle … The bullet was the means of physical subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation.”

EducationViolenceColonialismDiscourseColonizationSymbolic Violence
Author:Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
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