According to Sium, Desai, and Ritskes in Volume 1 of the Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society journal, decolonization entails “reimagin[ing] and rearticulat[ing] power, change, and knowledge through a multiplicity of epistemologies, ontologies and axiologies.” Further, “decolonization demands the valuing of Indigenous sovereignty in its material, psychological, epistemological, and spiritual forms.”
However, the continued oversimplification of the term “decolonization” has watered down its meaning. When only employed as a metaphor, it loses its potency. For instance, you’ll often hear people talk about “decolonizing” a syllabus or “decolonizing” their mind.
The scholars Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang explore how the reductive use of the term “decolonization” has become normalized within social justice frameworks. They argue that activists’ inability to question the word’s meaning prevents them from confronting the deeper issue of continued colonialism. As a result, “The desire to reconcile [becomes] just as relentless as the desire to disappear the Native; it is a desire to not have to deal with this (Indian) problem anymore.” Tuck and Yang describe this phenomenon using the phrase “settler moves to innocence,” explained as “strategies or positionings that attempt to relieve the settler of feelings of guilt or responsibility without giving up land or power or privilege.”
One of the methods used in decolonization efforts is repatriation, which Professor Rebecca L. Bourgeois of the University of Alberta’s Anthropology department describes as the “the return of cultural heritage […] from institutions back to their communities.” This “return of cultural heritage” is a laborious, complex process that can simultaneously conjure dark histories just as much as cherished ancestral knowledge for Indigenous communities.
Recently, a few objects have been successfully repatriated. For example, in 2023, the Royal BC Museum repatriated a Nuxalk totem pole back to the Nuxalk Nation. The totem pole was carved by the great-grandfather of the Hereditary Chief Snuxyaltwa (Deric Snow) and has a deep sense of meaning to the Nuxalk Nation. In a quote given to The Canadian Press, a Nuxalk member said “Our history is embedded in these poles, a great history, and when they’re taken, it’s almost as if it’s like our children were taken.”
“Rematriation” has also been raised as an alternative to the word “repatriation” in academic discourse to challenge colonial institutions such as heteropatriarchy. This term highlights the various considerations needed to be made during this return of artifacts. It also demonstrates how this process can look different to every Indigenous culture as each one has different protocols and traditions that need to be respected.
In exploring the nuances of the language surrounding decolonization, the Daily doesn’t claim to know exactly what reconciliation, repatriation, rematriation, or even decolonization itself should look like. As a publication on unceded land with an editorial board of non-Indigenous students the best we can do is to take a step back and ask ourselves: “How can we try to be more conscious of our word usage?”
If you are a non-Indigenous person reading this editorial, we ask you to do the same. Take a step back and question your place on Turtle Island. Read articles and discourse on Indigenous issues, keep up to date with local demonstrations, and draw informed conclusions. Below we have listed the scholarly sources that made up the argument of this article, and we urge you to look further.
“Towards the ‘tangible unknown’”: Decolonization and the
Indigenous future” by Aman Sium, Chandni Desai, and Eric
Ritskes
“Decolonization is not a metaphor” by Eve Tuck, State
University of New York at New Paltz, and K. Wayne Yang,
University of California, San Diego
“Rematriation: Ts’msyen Law, Rights of Relationality, and
Protocols of Return” by Robin R. R. Gray
“Reconceptualizing Repatriation as the Power to Decide” by
Rebecca L. Bourgeois, Kisha Supernant, and Neha Gupta