Why don't the Postcolonial users of Western culture send a formal "Thank You"?

reply to post by halfoldman


I saw this quote once and thought it was appropriate for the other sides perspective.

The native-american scholar, Ward Churchil, has this to say to so-called non-indigenous people:

"You have been colonised far longer than we, and therefore much more completely.The result is that you've become self-colonizing, conditioned to be so self-identified with your own oppression that you've lost the ability to see it for what it is, much less to resist it in any coherent way. Everyone is indigenous somewhere ... you must set yourselves to reclaiming your own indigenous past"

reply to post by archasama

Very interesting, thanks!
Still, Germany did not exist till 1871, and even after that if shrank and expanded at various times.
So what is the definition of "German" used in the source?
Is it "German speaking", which could have included the British at one time?

reply to post by Khaaaaaan!!

Thanks that is very true.
I have heard the same in African and Native American prophesy.

In my youth our culture (or modernist culture which is really the product of everyone) seemed so wicked that I dreamed of becoming the "other", or an anthropologist who would join some jungle tribe.
But that is just escapism.
In that sense it also made me realize how very racist some liberal assumptions are.
White/western/northern people did not make this world alone - other nations too gave their support in a long process.
I recall the 1980s, when Sting was "saving the Amazon tribes", and how disappointed he was when he found out they were selling their own forests to loggers.
We need to accept agency as much as charity, and romantic notions.
We mirror each other.
We can learn from the reflection.
In that sense we can learn from a continual discourse with each other.

reply to post by halfoldman


Wiki:H.R.E

In the empire's later years, its faltering cohesion and the fact that Imperial lands were primarily populated by Germans despite its official "Roman" title, led to the designation Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation by the 16th century. It is also termed the German First Reich.

Now do you understand?

reply to post by archasama

I understand it at as a misnomer for a collection of disparate peoples.
The "Ger" was a type of long spear used by this collection of "barbarian" tribes.
So I suppose they mean the tribes of central Europe, although they squabbled and migrated about.
One should ask those authors what they mean.

The First German Empire was "multi-ethnic", and encompassed lands far beyond the modern construct of Germany. en.wikipedia.org...
It included a large number of kings and feudal territories. I suppose it was really a Holy Roman empire, but the "barbarian" tribes became dominant in Rome, probably going back to the times when they joined the legions to fight other tribes. I suppose similar languages and a common religion is what kept it together. A form of Latin would have been a mutually understood language, rather than modern high German.

That is very interesting, and it is history that we learn nothing about in the post-colonial world.
We learn more about Shaka Zulu, and how he wiped out most of the tribes with blood-curdling savagery.
The survivors gathered around leaders and founded new tribes.
When the first settlers moved into the interior around 1820 is was virtually empty, and the few blacks they found were starving and cannibalizing each other.
Around 1900 there were 3 million blacks in SA, by the end of apartheid there were 40 million.