hapterC 1

IMPERIALISM, HISTORY, WRITING AND THEORY

!e master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house Audre Lorde1

Imperialism frames the Indigenous experience. It is part of our story, our version of modernity. Writing about our experiences under imperialism and its more speci!c expression of colonialism has become a signi!cant project of the Indigenous world. In a literary sense this has been de!ned by writers like Salman Rushdie, Ngugi wa "iong’o and many others whose literary origins are grounded in the landscapes, languages, cultures and imaginative worlds of peoples and nations whose own histories were interrupted and radically reformulated by European imperialism. While the project of creating this literature is important, what Indigenous activists would argue is that imperialism cannot be struggled over only at the level of text and literature. Imperialism still hurts, still destroys and is reforming itself constantly. Indigenous peoples as an international group have had to challenge, understand and have a shared language for talking about the history, the sociology, the psychology and the politics of imperialism and colonialism as an epic story telling of huge devastation, painful struggle and persistent survival. We have become quite good at talking that kind of talk, most o#en amongst ourselves, for ourselves and to ourselves. ‘"e talk’ about the colonial past is embedded in our political discourses, our humour, poetry, music, storytelling and other common sense ways of passing on both a narrative of history and an attitude about history. "e lived experiences of imperialism and colonialism contribute another dimension to the ways in which terms like ‘imperialism’ can be understood. "is is a dimension that Indigenous peoples know and understand well.

In this chapter the intention is to discuss and contextualize four concepts which are o#en present (though not necessarily clearly visible) in the ways in which the ideas of Indigenous peoples are articulated: imperialism, history, writing, and theory. "ese terms may seem to make

Decolonizing Methodologies

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies : Research and Indigenous Peoples, Bloomsbury Academic & Professional, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uhm/detail.action?docID=6605401. Created from uhm on 2022-08-20 10:20:19.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 02

1. B

lo om

sb ur

y Ac

ad em

ic &

P ro

fe ss

io na

l. Al

l r ig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

academic institutions imperialism colonialsim

Decolonizing Methodologies 22

Imperialism, History, Writing and !eory

up a strange selection, particularly as there are more obvious concepts such as self-determination or sovereignty which are used commonly in Indigenous discourses. I have selected these words because from an Indigenous perspective they are problematic. "ey are words which tend to provoke a whole array of feelings, attitudes and values. "ey are words of emotion which draw attention to the thousands of ways in which Indigenous languages, knowledges and cultures have been silenced or misrepresented, ridiculed or condemned in academic and popular discourses. "ey are also words which are used in particular sorts of ways or avoided altogether. In thinking about knowledge and research, however, these are important terms which underpin the practices and styles of research with Indigenous peoples. Decolonization is a process which engages with imperialism and colonialism at multiple levels. For researchers, one of those levels is concerned with having a more critical understanding of the underlying assumptions, motivations and values which inform research practices.

Before moving forward let me refer to the words of Audre Lorde that open this chapter. It is easy to think of the tools that the master created being generic and unbiased tools such as education, government, democracy and so forth. Not only are these terms not innocent but it is important to recognize that imperialism and colonialism enabled the design of speci!c tools tailored especially to deal with Indigenous Peoples. "e Doctrine of Discovery was a speci!c tool designed by the Catholic Church that ultimately became and still exists as a principle of discovery enshrined in law that will probably apply if humans choose to colonize a new planet. As Steve Newcomb argues, the Doctrine of Discovery was ‘premised on the idea that any Christian people, nation or state had a right of domination over the “discovered” lands and lives of non-Christians’. "e colonizer did not simply design an education system. "ey designed an education especially to destroy Indigenous cultures, value systems and appearance. "ose systems were called Indian boarding schools, residential schools, village day schools. "ey designed social policies designed especially to break down Indigenous families. "ese systems resulted in the stolen children in Australia, the removal of thousands of Indigenous children from their parents and communities, who were then placed in the homes of white families. "e master’s tools of colonization will not work to decolonize what the master built. Our challenge is to fashion new tools for the purpose of decolonizing and Indigenous tools that can revitalize Indigenous knowledge.2

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies : Research and Indigenous Peoples, Bloomsbury Academic & Professional, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uhm/detail.action?docID=6605401. Created from uhm on 2022-08-20 10:20:19.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 02

1. B

lo om

sb ur

y Ac

ad em

ic &

P ro

fe ss

io na

l. Al

l r ig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

1. Imperialism, History, Writing and !eory 23

Imperialism

"ere is one particular !gure whose name looms large, and whose spectre lingers, in Indigenous discussions of encounters with the West: Christopher Columbus. It is not simply that Columbus is identi!ed as the one who started it all, but rather that he has come to represent a huge legacy of su$ering and destruction. Columbus ‘names’ that legacy more than any other individual.3 He sets its modern time frame (500- plus years) and de!nes the outer limits of that legacy, that is, total destruction.4 But there are other signi!cant !gures who symbolize and frame Indigenous experiences in other places. In the imperial literature, these are the ‘heroes’, the discoverers and adventurers, the ‘fathers’ of colonialism. In the Indigenous literature these !gures are not so admired; their deeds are de!nitely not the deeds of wonderful discoverers and conquering heroes. In the South Paci!c, for example, it is the British explorer James Cook, whose expeditions had a very clear scienti!c purpose and whose !rst encounters with Indigenous peoples were fastidiously recorded. Hawai’ian academic Haunani Kay Trask’s list of what Cook brought to the Paci!c includes: ‘capitalism, Western political ideas (such as predatory individualism) and Christianity. Most destructive of all he brought diseases that ravaged my people until we were but a remnant of what we had been on contact with his pestilent crew’.5 "e French are remembered by Tasmanian Aborigine Greg Lehman, ‘not [for] the intellectual hubbub of an emerging anthrologie or even with the swish of their travel-weary frocks. It is with an arrogant death that they presaged their appearance….’6 For many communities, there were waves of di$erent sorts of Europeans: Dutch, Portuguese, British, French, whoever had political ascendancy over a region. And, in each place, a#er !gures such as Columbus and Cook had long departed, there came a vast array of military personnel, imperial administrators, priests, explorers, missionaries, colonial o%cials, artists, entrepreneurs and settlers, who cut a devastating swathe, and le# a permanent wound, on the societies and communities who occupied the lands named and claimed under imperialism.

"e concepts of imperialism and colonialism are crucial ones which are used across a range of disciplines, o#en with meanings which are taken for granted. "e two terms are interconnected and what is generally agreed upon is that colonialism is but one expression of imperialism. Imperialism tends to be used in at least four di$erent ways when describing the form of European imperialism which ‘started’

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies : Research and Indigenous Peoples, Bloomsbury Academic & Professional, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uhm/detail.action?docID=6605401. Created from uhm on 2022-08-20 10:20:19.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 02

1. B

lo om

sb ur

y Ac

ad em

ic &

P ro

fe ss

io na

l. Al

l r ig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

Decolonizing Methodologies 24

in the !#eenth century: (1) imperialism as economic expansion; (2) imperialism as the subjugation of ‘others’; (3) imperialism as an idea or spirit with many forms of realization; and (4) imperialism as a discursive !eld of knowledge. "ese usages do not necessarily contradict each other; rather, they need to be seen as analyses which focus on di$erent layers of imperialism. Initially, the term was used by historians to explain a series of developments leading to the economic expansion of Europe. Imperialism in this sense could be tied to a chronology of events related to ‘discovery’, conquest, exploitation, distribution and appropriation.

Economic explanations of imperialism were !rst advanced by English historian J. A. Hobson in 1902 and by Lenin in 1917.7 Hobson saw imperialism as being an integral part of Europe’s economic expansion. He attributed the later stages of nineteenth-century imperialism to the inability of Europeans to purchase what was being produced and the need for Europe’s industrialists to shi# their capital to new markets which were secure. Imperialism was the system of control which secured the markets and capital investments. Colonialism facilitated this expansion by ensuring that there was European control, which necessarily meant securing and subjugating the Indigenous populations. Like Hobson, Lenin was concerned with the ways in which economic expansion was linked to imperialism, although he argued that the export of capital to new markets was an attempt to rescue capitalism because Europe’s workers could not a$ord what was being produced.

A second use of the concept of imperialism focuses more upon the exploitation and subjugation of Indigenous peoples. Although economic explanations might account for why people like Columbus were funded to explore and discover new sources of wealth, they do not account for the devastating impact on the Indigenous peoples whose lands were invaded.

By the time contact was made in the South Paci!c, Europeans, and more particularly the British, had learned from their previous encounters with Indigenous peoples and had developed much more sophisticated ‘rules of practice’.8 While these practices ultimately lead to forms of subjugation, they also lead to subtle nuances which give an unevenness to the story of imperialism, even within the story of one Indigenous society. While in New Zealand all M&ori tribes, for example, lost the majority of their lands, not all tribes had their lands con!scated, were invaded militarily or were declared to be in rebellion. Similarly, while many Indigenous nations signed treaties, other Indigenous communities have no treaties. Furthermore, legislated identities which

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies : Research and Indigenous Peoples, Bloomsbury Academic & Professional, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uhm/detail.action?docID=6605401. Created from uhm on 2022-08-20 10:20:19.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 02

1. B

lo om

sb ur

y Ac

ad em

ic &

P ro

fe ss

io na

l. Al

l r ig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

1. Imperialism, History, Writing and !eory 25

regulated who was an Indian and who was not, who was a metis, who had lost all status as an Indigenous person, who had the correct fraction of blood quantum, who lived in the regulated spaces of reserves and communities, were all worked out arbitrarily (but systematically), to serve the interests of the colonizing society. "e speci!cities of imperialism help to explain the di$erent ways in which Indigenous peoples have struggled to recover histories, lands, languages and basic human dignity. "e way arguments are framed, the way dissent is controlled, the way settlements are made, while certainly drawing from international precedents, are also situated within a more localized discursive !eld.

A third major use of the term is much broader. It links imperialism to the spirit which characterized Europe’s global activities. MacKenzie de!nes imperialism as being ‘more than a set of economic, political and military phenomena. It is also a complex ideology which had wide- spread cultural, intellectual and technical expressions.’9 "is view of imperialism locates it within the Enlightenment spirit which signalled the transformation of economic, political and cultural life in Europe. In this wider Enlightenment context, imperialism becomes an integral part of the development of the modern state, of science, of ideas and of the ‘modern’ human person. In complex ways imperialism was also a mode through which the new states of Europe could expand their economies, through which new ideas and discoveries could be made and harnessed, and through which Europeans could develop their sense of European-ness. "e imperial imagination enabled European nations to imagine the possibility that new worlds, new wealth and new possessions existed that could be discovered and controlled. "is imagination was realized through the promotion of science, economic expansion and political practice.

"ese three interpretations of imperialism have re'ected a view from the imperial centre of Europe. In contrast, a fourth use of the term has been generated by writers whose understandings of imperialism and colonialism have been based either on their membership of and experience within colonized societies, or on their interest in understanding imperialism from the perspective of local contexts. Although these views of imperialism take into account the other forms of analysis, there are some important distinctions. "ere is, for example, a greater and more immediate need to understand the complex ways in which people were brought within the imperial system, because its impact is still being felt, despite the apparent independence gained by former colonial territories. "e reach of imperialism into ‘our heads’

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies : Research and Indigenous Peoples, Bloomsbury Academic & Professional, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uhm/detail.action?docID=6605401. Created from uhm on 2022-08-20 10:20:19.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 02

1. B

lo om

sb ur

y Ac

ad em

ic &

P ro

fe ss

io na

l. Al

l r ig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

Decolonizing Methodologies 26

challenges those who belong to colonized communities to understand how this occurred, partly because we perceive a need to decolonize our minds, to recover ourselves, to claim a space in which to develop a sense of authentic humanity. "is analysis of imperialism has been referred to more recently in terms such as ‘post-colonial discourse’, the ‘empire writes back’ and/or ‘writing from the margins’. "ere is a more political body of writing, however, which extends to the revolutionary, anti-colonial work of various activists (only some of whom, such as Frantz Fanon, actually wrote their ideas down) that draws also upon the work of black and African American writers and other minority writers whose work may have emerged out of a concern for human and civil rights, the rights of women and other forms of oppression.

Colonialism became imperialism’s outpost, the fort and the port of imperial outreach. Whilst colonies may have started as a means to secure ports, access to raw materials and e%cient transfer of commodities from point of origin to the imperial centre, they also served other functions. It was not just Indigenous populations who had to be subjugated. Europeans also needed to be kept under control, in service to the greater imperial enterprise. Colonial outposts were also cultural sites which preserved an image or represented an image of what the West or ‘civilization’ stood for. Colonies were not exact replicas of the imperial centre, culturally, economically or politically. Europeans resident in the colonies were not culturally homogeneous, so there were struggles within the colonizing community about its own identity. Wealth and class status created very powerful settler interests which came to dominate the politics of a colony. Colonialism was, in part, an image of imperialism, a particular realization of the imperial imagination. It was also, in part, an image of the future nation it would become. In this image lie images of the Other, stark contrasts and subtle nuances, of the ways in which the Indigenous communities were perceived and dealt with, which make the stories of colonialism part of a grander narrative and yet part also of a very local, very speci!c experience.

A constant reworking of our understandings of the impact of imperialism and colonialism is an important aspect of Indigenous cultural politics and forms the basis of an Indigenous language of critique. Within this critique there have been two major strands. One draws upon a notion of authenticity, of a time before colonization in which we were intact as Indigenous peoples. We had absolute authority over our lives; we were born into and lived in a universe which was entirely of our making. We did not ask, need or want to be ‘discovered’ by Europe. "e second strand of the language of critique demands that

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies : Research and Indigenous Peoples, Bloomsbury Academic & Professional, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uhm/detail.action?docID=6605401. Created from uhm on 2022-08-20 10:20:19.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 02

1. B

lo om

sb ur

y Ac

ad em

ic &

P ro

fe ss

io na

l. Al

l r ig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

concerns of wealth and

class without lens on

sovrigty are settler

interests

about colonialism

1. Imperialism, History, Writing and !eory 27

we have an analysis of how we were colonized, of what that has meant in terms of our immediate past and what it means for our present and future. "e two strands intersect but what is particularly signi!cant in Indigenous discourses is that solutions are posed from a combination of the time before, colonized time, and the time before that, pre-colonized time. Decolonization encapsulates both sets of ideas.

"ere are, however, new challenges to the way Indigenous peoples think and talk about imperialism. When the word globalization is substituted for the word imperialism, or when the pre!x ‘post’ is attached to colonial, we are no longer talking simply about historical formations which are still lingering in our consciousness. Globalization and conceptions of a new world order represent di$erent sorts of challenges for Indigenous peoples. While being on the margins of the world has had dire consequences, being incorporated within the world’s marketplace has di$erent implications and in turn requires the mounting of new forms of resistance. Similarly, post-colonial discussions have also stirred some Indigenous resistance, not so much to the literary reimagining of culture as being centred in what were once conceived of as the colonial margins, but to the idea that colonialism is over, !nished business. "is is best articulated by Aborigine activist Bobbi Sykes, who asked at an academic conference on post-colonialism, ‘What? Post-colonialism? Have they le#?’ "ere is also, amongst Indigenous academics, the sneaking suspicion that the fashion of post-colonialism has become a strategy for reinscribing or reauthorizing the privileges of non-Indigenous academics because the !eld of ‘post-colonial’ discourse has been de!ned in ways which can still leave out Indigenous peoples, our ways of knowing and our current concerns.

Research within late-modern and late-colonial conditions continues relentlessly and brings with it a new wave of exploration, discovery, exploitation and appropriation. Researchers enter communities armed with goodwill in their front pockets and patents in their back pockets; they bring medicine into villages and extract blood for genetic analysis.

No matter how appalling their behaviours, how insensitive and o$ensive their personal actions may be, their acts and intentions are always justi!ed as being for the ‘good of mankind’. Research of this nature on Indigenous peoples is still justi!ed by the ends rather than the means, particularly if the Indigenous peoples concerned can still be positioned as ignorant and undeveloped (savages). Other researchers gather traditional herbal and medicinal remedies and remove them for analysis in laboratories around the world. Still others collect the intangibles: the belief systems and ideas about healing, about the

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies : Research and Indigenous Peoples, Bloomsbury Academic & Professional, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uhm/detail.action?docID=6605401. Created from uhm on 2022-08-20 10:20:19.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 02

1. B

lo om

sb ur

y Ac

ad em

ic &

P ro

fe ss

io na

l. Al

l r ig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

complexity of using “post-

colonial”

research and

exploitation

Decolonizing Methodologies 28

universe, about relationships and ways of organizing, and the practices and rituals which go alongside such beliefs, such as sweat lodges, massage techniques, chanting, hanging crystals and wearing certain colours. "e global hunt for new knowledges, new materials, new cures, supported by international agreements such as the General Agreement on Tari$s and Trade (GATT) brings new threats to Indigenous communities. "e ethics of research, the ways in which Indigenous communities can protect themselves and their knowledges, the understandings required not just of state legislation but of international agreements – these are the topics now on the agenda of many Indigenous meetings.

On Being Human

!e faculty of imagination is not strongly developed among them, although they permitted it to run wild in believing absurd superstitions.

A. S. "ompson, 185910

One of the supposed characteristics of primitive peoples was that we could not use our minds or intellects. We could not invent things, we could not create institutions or history, we could not imagine, we could not produce anything of value, we did not know how to use land and other resources from the natural world, we did not practice the ‘arts’ of civilization. By lacking such virtues we disquali!ed ourselves, not just from civilization but from humanity itself. In other words we were not ‘fully human’; some of us were not even considered partially human. Ideas about what counted as human in association with the power to de!ne people as human or not human were already encoded in imperial and colonial discourses prior to the period of imperialism covered here.11 Imperialism provided the means through which concepts of what counts as human could be applied systematically as forms of classi!cation, for example through hierarchies of race and typologies of di$erent societies. In conjunction with imperial power and with ‘science’, these classi!cation systems came to shape relations between imperial powers and Indigenous societies.

Said has argued that the ‘oriental’ was partially a creation of the West, based on a combination of images formed through scholarly and imaginative works. Fanon argued earlier that the colonized were brought into existence by the settler and the two, settler and colonized,

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies : Research and Indigenous Peoples, Bloomsbury Academic & Professional, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uhm/detail.action?docID=6605401. Created from uhm on 2022-08-20 10:20:19.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 02

1. B

lo om

sb ur

y Ac

ad em

ic &

P ro

fe ss

io na

l. Al

l r ig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

1. Imperialism, History, Writing and !eory 29

are mutual constructions of colonialism. In Fanon’s words: ‘we know each other well’.12 "e European powers had by the nineteenth century already established systems of rule and forms of social relations which governed interaction with the Indigenous peoples being colonized. "ese relations were gendered, hierarchical and supported by rules, some explicit and others masked or hidden. "e principle of ‘humanity’ was one way in which the implicit or hidden rules could be shaped. To consider Indigenous peoples as not fully human, or not human at all, enabled distance to be maintained and justi!ed various policies of either extermination or domestication. Some Indigenous peoples (‘not human’) were hunted and killed like vermin, others (‘partially human’) were rounded up and put in reserves like creatures to be broken in, branded and put to work.

"e struggle to assert and claim humanity has been a consistent thread of anti-colonial discourses on colonialism and oppression. "is struggle for humanity has generally been framed within the wider discourse of humanism, the appeal to human ‘rights’, the notion of a universal human subject, and the connections between being human and being capable of creating history, knowledge and society. "e focus on asserting humanity has to be seen within the anti-colonial analysis of imperialism and what were seen as imperialism’s dehumanizing imperatives, which were structured into the language, economy, social relations and cultural life of colonial societies. Mignolo and Walsh link the invention of the idea of the ‘Human’ to the very heart of the colonial matrix of power and see the formation of the idea of the Human and the separate idea of Nature emerging in the European Renaissance.13

From the nineteenth century onwards the processes of dehumanization were o#en hidden behind justi!cations for imperialism and colonialism, which were clothed within an ideology of humanism and liberalism and the assertion of moral claims that related to a concept of civilized ‘man’. "e moral justi!cations did not necessarily stop the