Colonization Quotes

“The same people that outlawed the practice of Native American Medicine (without a colonizer centric degree), outlawed the traditional practice of healing those that are hurt/ill without expecting anything in return. Free healthcare. The basis of community.”
― San Mateo, San Mateo: Proof of The Divine

“How can I tell a story we already know too well? Her name was Africa. His was France. He colonized her, exploited her, silenced her, and even decades after it was supposed to have ended, still acted with a high hand in resolving her affairs in places like Côte d'Ivoire, a name she had been given because of her export products, not her own identity.
Her name was Asia. His was Europe. Her name was silence. His was power. Her name was poverty. His was wealth. Her name was Her, but what was hers? His name was His, and he presumed everything was his, including her, and he thought be could take her without asking and without consequences. It was a very old story, though its outcome had been changing a little in recent decades. And this time around the consequences are shaking a lot of foundations, all of which clearly needed shaking.
Who would ever write a fable as obvious, as heavy-handed as the story we've been given?
...
His name was privilege, but hers was possibility. His was the same old story, but hers was a new one about the possibility of changing a story that remains unfinished, that includes all of us, that matters so much, that we will watch but also make and tell in the weeks, months, years, decades to come.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Men Explain Things to Me

“It has no eyes. Zack, why doesn’t it have any eyes? ”
― Barry Kirwan, The Eden Paradox

“People rarely search for bodies in ceilings…”
― Barry Kirwan, The Eden Paradox

“Beef had hit $300 a kilo. Not that he could recall the last time he’d tasted real beef.”
― Barry Kirwan, The Eden Paradox

“They must train you pretty good not to react to shit like that. Must take stuff out of you.” Vince’s eyes intensified then broke her gaze. ‘Actually, it’s more like they put stuff in.”
― Barry Kirwan, The Eden Paradox

“Your life is a beer glass Micah, but you want champagne”
― Barry Kirwan, The Eden Paradox

“Vasquez faced off Vince. “We’ll meet in hell for sure.” Vince didn’t blink. “I have a condo there waiting for me. You’re welcome for tea. Now, give the order, Colonel.”
― Barry Kirwan, The Eden Paradox

“He wondered what his father had been thinking in those last final moments as he was slipping away, whether the heroism, the honour, the war, or maybe, just maybe, the smaller people in his life, his family.”
― Barry Kirwan, The Eden Paradox

“Perhaps Mozart’s Requiem would be fitting music for the end of the world. She began to hum Dies Irae, recalling its first performance in Vienna.”
― Barry Kirwan, The Eden Paradox

“She stared at her console, wanting to punch it. Her dream, running to save her life, to save everything, was all going to come true down on the planet’s surface. And when it did, she knew this time she wasn’t going to wake up.”
― Barry Kirwan, The Eden Paradox

“Take it from me, kid, sometimes it’s okay to run. You run as fast as you damn well can.”
― Barry Kirwan, The Eden Paradox

“One of the hallmarks of Western liberalism is an assumption in hindsight of virtuous resistance as the only polite expectation of people on the receiving end of colonialism. While the terrible thing is happening, while the land is still being stolen, and the natives still being killed, any form of opposition is terroristic and must be crushed for the sake of civilization. But decades, centuries later, when enough of the land has been stolen and enough of the natives killed, it is safe enough to venerate resistance in hindsight. I tell stories for a living and there’s a thick thread of narrative by well-meaning white Westerners that exalts the native populations in so many parts of the world for standing up to the occupiers. Makes of their narrative a neat, reflexive arc in which it was always understood by the colonized and, this part implied, the descendants of the colonizer, that what happened was wrong.”
― Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.”
― Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

“It’s bad enough . . . when a country gets colonized, but when the people do as well! That’s the end, really, that’s the end.”
― Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions

“Colonialism. The enforced spread of the rule of reason. But who is going to spread it among the colonizers?”
― Anthony Burgess

“Welcome to the truth of our world-a massive seed shot out to the stars, filled with deadly children. A seed designed to slay everything it touches.”
― Greg Bear, Hull Zero Three

“When individuals and communities do not govern self, they risk being ruled by external forces that care less about the well-being of the village.”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence

“Our people think: I , Wangari, a Kenyan by birth - how can I be a vagrant in my own country as if I were a foreigner.”
― Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross

“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.”
― Tim Marshall, Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics

“When all else fails, don't take it in silence: scream like hell, scream like Jericho was tumbling down, serenaded by a brace of trombones, scream”
― Dambudzo Marechera

“Can you imagine the feeling of being an oppressed colonial being addressed respectfully by a colonizer in the mother country?”
― Ambeth Ocampo, Rizal Without the Overcoat

“Mankind without Earth is Humanity without a Home”
― S.G. Rainbolt

“I sometimes feel like a foolish young grandmother armed with a teaspoon, determined to remove three mountains from the path to liberation: the mountain of racism, the mountain of sexism and the mountain of nationalist oppression. I tire easily these days ... Sometimes I feel the tiredness is old, as old as the colonial process itself. On those days I am energized by the fact that it is not my fatigue but the fatigue of the oppressor's system which haunts me. On other days the tiredness is deeply personal.”
― Lee Maracle, I Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism

“The early North American Indian made a great mistake by not having an immigration bureau.”
― Anonymous

“I hear the storm. They talk to me about progress, about "achievements," diseases cured, improved standards of living.
I am talking about societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled underfoot, institutions undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic creations destroyed, extraordinary possibilities wiped out.
They throw facts at my head, statistics, mileages of roads, canals, and railroad tracks.
I am talking about thousands of men sacrificed to the Congo-Ocean. I am talking about those who, as I write this, are digging the harbor of Abidjan by hand. I am talking about millions of men torn from their gods, their land, their habits, their life-from life, from the dance, from wisdom.”
― Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism

“I take French Champagne
In the American way—
At first, tasted for experience
And then swallowed whole.”
― Addy Evenson, Champagne

“Taking her lands, plowing her fields.
Carving her borders, making her hips slender.
Killing her man, you prevailed on her widowhood.
Taming her rivers, you drenched her ebony cheeks.
Penchant for her, you stripped off her loincloth,
Dressing her in names she could not speak.”
― Olomunyak Ole Marine, The Princess Crown Land

“Eurocentrism - The First Global Catastrophe (Sonnet 2626)

Climate change is nothing,
the first humanly caused
global catastrophe was eurocentrism -

before colonials, science was rooted in society, and
philosophy was rooted in community, not snobbery,
medicine was centered on people, not profit,
religion was lived experience, not salesmanship -

farmland was family, not property,
innovation empowered life, not luxury -

psychology prioritized understanding
and healing, not analysis and isolation,
poetry was the everyday way of life,
not aristocratic escapism.

Sure, there was superstition back then as well,
but no superstition of the pre-colonial world
comes close in atrocity to the fancy superstitions
of the imperials marketed as progress.

Eurocentrism is the biggest impediment to education -
stand and burn the colonial syllabus, that's enlightenment!”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“Before colonials, science was rooted in society, and
philosophy was rooted in community, not snobbery,
medicine was centered on people, not profit,
religion was lived experience, not salesmanship. Sure, there was superstition back then as well, but no superstition of the pre-colonial world comes close in atrocity to the fancy superstitions of the imperials marketed as progress. Eurocentrism is the biggest impediment to education - stand and burn the colonial syllabus, that's enlightenment!”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock