Colonization Quotes

“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

“Your life is a beer glass Micah, but you want champagne”
― 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

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

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

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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

“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

“While Aztlán is debatable to some, the time of enlightenment is taking place in the 21st century, and it is essential that we learn of our ancestry. Nationhood and sovereignty are not a separatist plan, but a tool for decolonizing. We need to DECOLONIZE, DECOLONIZE, DECOLONIZE. Already Emma Perez, Chela Sandoval and other writers have devoted a considerable amount of thought and time on the need to decolonize and resist further colonization in the world.

(The Women of Raza)”
― Enriqueta Vasquez

“Revolution means literally a complete reversal of the old power relationships, with its embedded institutions. So yes, we need a total revolution. It is time for the sacred to come forward, for we are indeed sacred beings. That much is clear from history. For too long we have been told: "That's the way things have always been done." Not true. Our earth and humanity has been around a long time, and there is a peaceful instinct inherent in human beings. There have been harmonious times in the past, and there is no reason for not working to achieve a greater humanity today. I strive to be part of that humanity. In The Women of La Raza, we learn of how much "today's values" have been forced upon us as "traditions" by colonizers who want us to behave within a certain mindset, conforming to the status quo. They consider profits first, despite the global conflicts and suffering it has caused throughout the centuries. It is past time for us to ask the kind of questions that gives us, not only answers, but places us in a quest for solutions to the spiritual and social problems facing the world today.”
― Enriqueta Vasquez

“The Europeans are sometimes described as "discovering America," which is confusing, because of course there were already people living there, so it would be as if I walked into your house and said I discovered it, simply because I hadn't been there before. In history, such visitors are often referred to as "pioneers," but in this situation you would probably be more likely to call me a burglar.”
― Lemony Snicket, Poison for Breakfast

“Le chasseur sait qu'après son passage la piste disparaîtra, minée par le soleil, engloutie par l'eau. On dirait que la piste attend qu'il soit passé avant de se démanteler. Dans quelques jours, nous traverserons le Cabonga en canot. Poné est comme une outarde. Il annonce le printemps et ça lui plaît. Avant l'arrivée des Blancs, nous savions ce que chaque année nous amènerait. Aujourd'hui, on ne sait plus rien. S'ils pouvaient donc nous laisser vivre en paix. C'est tout ce que nous demandons. Vivre dignement en paix. Nous le méritons bien.”
― Michel Noël, Hush! Hush!

“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.”
― Donna Goddard, Nanima: Spiritual Fiction

“How we name things is closely connected with how we perceive them. Why else would colonisers rename everything?”
― Donna Goddard, Nanima: Spiritual Fiction

“Do you know that the most disastrous aspect of colonization which we are the most reluctant to release from our mind is their colonization of the "Image of God".

We used to have an Image that represented our understanding of God at that time, they came and demonized those images then created another, in the process, they changed our names, made us think that our intelligence only starts when we can speak and write their language not ours.

As long as we still believe these things, we are still in deeper slavery.

Start thinking people”
― Chidi Ejeagba

“You might try dancing theory with a bustle, or a jingle dress, or with turtles strapped around your legs. You might try wearing colonization like a heavy gold chain around a pimp's neck.”
― Joy Harjo, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems

“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.”
― Julissa Arce, You Sound Like a White Girl: The Case for Rejecting Assimilation

“We wish to be left alone in the lands of our forefathers, whose bones lie in the sand hills and along the trails, but a pale-face stranger has come from a distant land and sends word to us that we must give up our country, as he wants it for the white man. Where can we go? There is no place left. Only a single mountain now separates us from the big salt water of the setting sun. Our fathers from the hunting grounds of the other world are looking down on us today. Let us not make them ashamed! My people, the Great Spirit has his eyes upon us. He will be angry if, like cowardly dogs, we give up our lands to the whites. Better to die like brave warriors on the battlefield, than live among our vanquishers, despised. Our young men and women would speedily become debauched by their fire water and we should perish as a race.”
― A J Splawn, Ka-Mi-Akin, the Last Hero of the Yakimas

“Colonization has changed everything about the way we live our lives. Our nations were made up of strong families that supported each other by intense extended affiliations and supportive networks of clans. Our people put a priority on knowledge and indigenous intelligence; there were always thinking and constantly assessing the possibilities of growth and adaptation to new realities. They possessed spiritual power and were guided in the conduct of their lives by their indigenous customs and religious beliefs. They were unified in their communities and interactions. This sense of unity was especially important to them because they understood the disunity degraded not only their existence as collectives but also their spiritual power as persons. Reciprocity and mutual obligation were the foundations of human interactions and of relationships with other elements of creation. This created the kind of solidarity that allowed them to withstand the challenges of survival in hard physical environments and against evil forces—that allowed them to survive intact as those nations. Most clearly different from the way we live our lives, our ancestors lived in a culture and society of warriors; there was social pressure for men to walk the warrior’s path, and women's roles were defined in accordance with their power and responsibility to maintain the culture and care for the families and to enable the men to defend the nation.
… we cannot hold on to a concept of the warrior that is gendered in the way it once was and that is located in an obsolete view of men's and women's roles. The battles we are fighting are no longer primarily physical; thus, any idea of the indigenous warrior framed solely in masculine terms is outdated and must be rethought and recast from the solely masculine view of the old traditional ways to a new concept of the warrior that is freed from colonial gender constructions and articulated instead with reference to what really counts in our struggles: the qualities and the actions of a person, man or woman, in battle.”
― Taiaike Alfred

“The inherent conservatism of any human community is strengthened further in a colonial situation by manipulation by elites that have much to lose through any change in the status quo. This conservatism is manifest in personal and public ways and underscores the stronghold colonial myths and identities have on people and how deeply entrenched the psychological bases of imperialism actually are in the public mind. People, not the system, must be the focus of the movement for change because, after all it is people who make up empires; systems and structures are only the theoretical constructions we use to understand the dynamics of psychology manifesting and people interacting in public and private ways.”
― Taiaike Alfred

“A meager colonization program had been underway before the war, but now that the sun had ceased to shine on Earth, the colonization entered an entirely new phase. In connection with this a weapon of war, the Synthetic Freedom Fighter, had been modified; able to function on an alien world, the humanoid robot--strictly speaking, the organic android--had become the mobile donkey engine of the colonization program. Under U.N. law each emigrant automatically received possession of an android subtype of his choice, and, by 1990, the variety of subtypes passed all understanding, in the manner of American automobiles of the 1960s.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“আড়াইশো বছর আগে ব্রিটিশরা এদেশ দখল করেছিল। ওদের ওপর আমাদের বিপ্লবীদের রাগ থাকা খুবই স্বাভাবিক। কিন্তু বন্দুকের সঙ্গে জ্ঞানের প্রদীপটি নিয়ে আসতে বাধ্য হয়েছিল ওরা। যার আলোকে আমাদের গোটা ঊনবিংশ শতাব্দী আলোকিত। সিরাজের বংশধররা যা দিতে পারেনি ব্রিটিশরা তা এদেশের মানুষকে দিয়ে গেছে। ওই যে বলে না, সব কিছুর একটা ভালো দিক আছে। অত্যন্ত খারাপ থেকেও মঙ্গলময় ঘটনা ঘটে যেতে পারে। ইতিহাসে যারা বিশ্বাসঘাতক বলে চিহ্নিত তারা বিশ্বাসঘাতকতা না করলে আমরা হয়ত একনও একশো বছর পিছিয়ে থাকতাম।”
― Samaresh Majumdar