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It is certainly not for me to tell you how to feel about your home country, but it is not that hard to imagine a version of the past with less colonialism and a
by JamisonM 6y ago
It is certainly not for me to tell you how to feel about your home country, but it is not that hard to imagine a version of the past with less colonialism and a better outcome. Consider only Thailand's example as something to think about.
"Disentangling" isn't about throwing things away and being left with nothing, it - I think - is about reevaluating what you have and what you would like through the careful consideration of the colonial legacy. The people with power in a society, even if they are not themselves "colonists" are often served well by the status quo, so a detached examination of these things is often challenging.
I think the waves and waves of "colonialism" are not really relevant to the discussion, the "modern" system of colonialism is a distinct thing, worthy of consideration in isolation and there might very well be some good to come of thinking about it. For me, I am a Canadian so I think of these things in terms of the indigenous peoples of Canada, who have had a lot of success in reclaiming something of an independent identity within Canada but still inside the larger social context. It is not a straightforward thing and it is more important to some people than to others, but it is interesting and has value nonetheless.
- sterlind 6y agoExactly. Indigenous people in North America weren't just colonized, their cultures were systematically destroyed. Children were taken away on steamboats to boarding schools, forced into Christianity and beaten if they spoke their native languages. Now the languages are all almost completely dead and the cultures have suffered greatly. It was the explicit goal of the white governments to wipe out native cultures and forcibly assimilate them. Decolonization is about recovering from that, not about eschewing cars for canoes.