USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and similar nations are settler-colonial nations where the indigenous people have been genocided to the point where settlers vastly outnumber them. How is decolonization going to work in this situation?

Bonus: How is a post-revolution Japan going to reconcile with the Ainu and Ryukyu people?

  • SadArtemis🏳️‍⚧️@lemmygrad.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    14
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    7 months ago

    Honestly? As someone who’s been raised partly in the rural Canadian prairies and has seen how things are there- before there is any decolonization in sight, I’d expect things to get much worse first and foremost- in a similar fashion to how Israel is increasing its genocidal slaughter of the Palestinians as they see their window of opportunity running out in the region, etc.

    The white settler-culture, particularly in rural regions, sees the very existence of natives as an insult and a threat to their own settler existence- one that, whether with official state support or unofficial approval, they are more than willing to do their part in destroying, whether through their individual actions in policing, medical sabotage (for instance the involuntary/coerced sterilizations), through the child welfare services, etc. For now there tends to be an uneasy and unjust peace- but as calls for decolonization (whether in the form of reparations, land back, increased autonomy, etc) increase, eventually I’d expect the settlers to start behaving exactly like the Zionists currently are- and exactly like the settler-societies across the Anglosphere behaved for much of their history.

    There’s been some social progress and education in the west since those times (not that the issues have wholly gone away or anything close to it), but ultimately, the sentiments still remain in a considerable enough fashion- and I’d expect most people to act on what they see as their “best interests” in defending their ill-gotten privileges and land- and whether explicitly or implicitly (nowadays more implicitly), the settlers will always have the state’s support, particularly as the natives are the biggest eyesore to the settler-state and settler-capital. IMO these two factors will have to be dealt with first, before any kind of decolonization can truly begin.