Introduction by Late Dr. Rowan Wolf (Editor Uncommon Thought Journal, USA)
The problems of today, in any nation on the planet, have their roots in history – in decisions made and paths taken. It is a particularly apt time to look closely at colonization. We can think of it simplistically as a pattern in the past whereby certain nations, through a combination of practices, subdued and attempted to supplant the indigenous peoples of lands the supplanters desired. That combination of processes was not singular. There was the outright use of military force; there was the withholding of food and access to survival (in combination known as genocide); there were attempts to destroy the culture, language, and spirituality (known as cultural genocide).
However, colonization is not simply a process that is engaged in by the colonizer on those to be colonized. It also requires fundamental changes in the hearts, minds, and ways of being of the colonizers themselves. In order to engage in the colonization of others, one must in someways colonize one’s own people and culture. We cannot dehumanize others, and turn others into “the other”, or even “monsters” without losing some of our own humanity. But importantly, we must learn to lie to ourselves, and give up the path to truth. We must blind ourselves, and make our understanding of our past into an easily rewritten story, and thereby the people of the colonizers also become eminently colonizable. There is a long-recognized process called “internal colonization.” While this concept is often applied to “uneven development within a nation”, there is another meaning whereby some or all of a colonized people internalized the views and rules of the colonizers. What is also true is that, to one extent or another, we are all internalizing colonization – subduing ourselves for the state, or the powers that be. An accurate, and detailed understanding of history is critical. Not just to address the institutionalized and normalized inequalities of the past, but to see and eradicate those processes as they operate today. Otherwise, we continue to oppress our fellow citizens and people around the planet but also continue to deny and suppress our own full and better selves.
History is Living and Clarifies the Pertinent Facts of Life
To be an informed and progressive generation of people for sustainable change and human development, we must discover an unambiguous and self-evident knowledge-based understanding of history to reform the socio-ethnic and political contradictions covered up by a misreading of history. In books and historic records, we encounter some of the unimaginable, intangible, and mysterious narratives on the European scheme of colonization in Canada, America, and Australia. Ronald Wright,Stolen Continents: Conquest and Resistance in the Americas (1992) (1) is one of the award-winning Canadian scholarly sources covering the five centuries of Europeans coming to the ‘New World’. It brings together powerful contemporary, vivid, and accurate historic insights into the conquests of the great American cultures of Aztec, Maya, Inca, Cherokee, and Iroquois people. Professor Howard Zinn,(A People’s History of the United States. 1980), clarifies that “Columbus gold motivated him…: Columbus killed Indians…. enslaved Indians, Columbus tortured Indians, he cut off their armS… No, he’s not a hero. The heroes are the people who resisted him.”(2)
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (An Indigenous People’s History of the United States. 2014), adroitly challenges the founding myth of the United States and “shows how policy against the Indigenous peoples was colonialist and designed to seize the territories of the original inhabitants, displacing or eliminating them.” And notes: “We fail to recognize the humanity- or often even the existence – of the Indigenous peoples who were here first, and are still here. Our students will see the history of this country much more clearly when we put Indigenous people’s lives at the center.” (3)
Across Canada, the US, and Australia, European settlers had a unique approach how to colonize the indigenous peoples, their lands, and their culture that allowed them to survive in extremely harsh conditions. By a combination of genocide, dehumanization, “civilizing” techniques, and making the tribes dependent wards, the systematic colonization approach taken by the colonialists was dependent upon using a welfare state as a project of colonization. (4)
The 15th-century European emigrants had experienced wars and the overwhelming corrupt authority of the church and a wide range of chronic social turmoil, epidemic diseases, economic backwardness, spiritual malaise, and mysterious famine and deaths. The ‘discovery’ of America’ offered a new threshold of opportunities to European migrants. But the invading settlers used absolute power to wage wars to solve their own problems at the expense of the new land and the native North Americans who had well-established and flourishing cultures of their own. Time and history demand concerted plans and continuous implementation for socio-economic-political change to restore Indigenous people’s trust in human rights and equality. There needs to be social emancipation for equal participation in governance and the acknowledgment of historic injustices done to dehumanize indigenous people, their lives, cultures, and values. Centuries later, the politically biased Canadian “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” (TRC) (2007-2015), held public meetings to address the legacy of the alleged ‘genocide’ of innocent children by the church-operated ‘Indian Residential Schools system’ and discoveries of hidden graves. The term “alleged” is used because Canadian (and American) governments refuse to acknowledge that genocide actually took place. Through the TRC, First Nation people had an opportunity to share their stories and experiences in public and to spell out a much-needed compassionate understanding of the residential school system. This was in vivid contrast to the perverse genius which created a more nefarious system to thrive on power, conflict, and fear. As part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accepted the Final Report and imperatives of 94 ‘calls for action.”
Were the European Settlers Racist and Violent to Dictate the Indigenous People’s History?
Whatever White European history willed, the native Indian history reflected. Canada was structured as a settler colonial dominion. Many European nations, and the new government of Canada, imposed its own laws, institutions, and culture on the Indigenous peoples. During this period of colonial policy, other colonialists occupied the lands of the Indigenous Peoples. (5) Racist attitudes justified Canada‘s policy of assimilation and eradication which in many ways sought to eliminate the Indigenous Peoples physically and culturally. Tens of thousands of Indigenous people – young and old, males and females – were lost to the alleged Canadian system of genocide. Despite that, First Nations people including the Inuit, Metis, and other tribes are still inhabitants. It is critical not to discount the historic horrors of genocide or the resilience of the Indigenous Peoples. Historic and contemporary actions contributed to the endemic violence against Indigenous Peoples. (6) Ultimately, the unjust deaths of the Indigenous Peoples are linked to colonial violence, racism, and oppression.
A direct consequence of this colonial policy and racist attitude was that colonial violence as well as racism, sexism, and other forms of injustice became entrenched and institutionalized in everyday life against Indigenous Peoples.(7) Encompassing the injustice and its consequential impacts that generations of Indigenous Peoples have grown up with and these types of injustice, social apartheid, and discrimination have become normalized. Thus, settler colonialism is the cause of increased rates of poor health, higher rates of violence, and other social problems that the Indigenous population has endured over time and continues to endure to this day.
The Indigenous Peoples were subjected to policies that led to poverty by way of settler colonial policies. Racist and discriminatory policies terminated hundreds of years of economic well-being and self–sufficiency. Imposing poverty on the Indigenous Peoples created state dependency on the colonized state.(8) This dependency was needed by the state in order to control and oversee every aspect of Indigenous Peoples’ lives, cultures, and communities. (9)
Indigenous People Deprived of Quality of Life and Social Justice
The quality of life in a country and the well being of citizens are determined by the social welfare system. (10) Social determinants of health are variables and factors which go towards optimum physical and mental health and general well being. (11) The Canadian Welfare System consists of various social policy programs and services. The most important of these in alleviating poverty and helping the working poor are income security programs and social services. Income security programs provide monetary or other material benefits in order to provide income and maintain minimum income levels. This happens by way of Employment Insurance, Social Assistance, and Old Age Security. (12) This factors in with our historical model of social security wherein people are responsible for their own well being. If individuals could meet their own needs and not need government assistance, the result would be that the need for income security programs would be significantly reduced. Income security programs provide financial stability and protection from vulnerabilities.
Poverty is another social determinant of health and well being. Poverty is the condition wherein people, families, and demographics lack the resources to obtain the type of food needed, to participate in activities, and to have customary or normal living conditions and amenities that provide well being. (13) Poverty can be absolute or relative. The difference between these is that those suffering from absolute poverty don’t have the resources in order to provide for their physical and mental health. Relative poverty is where people cannot participate in common activities or daily life. Programs such as income security programs provide monetary or other material benefits in order to maintain a minimum quality of life. (14) This would help those suffering from absolute poverty to buy the food they need in order for their physical and mental health to recover. Having financial resources also allows those experiencing relative poverty to participate in common activities. (15)
Social Services Devoid of A Sense of Human Equality
Social services, which may include personal or community services, help the working poor by providing non-monetary aid to those who are needy. These services include probation, addiction treatment, youth drop-in centers, child-care centers, child protection services, women’s shelters, and counseling. (16) Many of these services are important to the working poor. The Public Health Agency of Canada found that recent immigrants are 2 times more likely to be among the working poor. (17) This demographic of individuals may in fact benefit from youth drop-in centers and free child care. Social services would allow mothers and fathers greater freedom in being employed and making sure their children are safe and taken care of. First Nations people, on and off reserves, have more than 2 times higher proportion of working poor than non-Indigenous people.Homelessness and drug addictions are major social problems that Indigenous Peoples contend with for their survival. It will be incumbent upon the Government in Canada and NGO’s to work out new policies and humanitarian plans to extend social services such as counseling, spiritual healing, women’s shelters, and drug addiction treatments to ensure human equality offering proper care for the well being and progress of the Indigenous Peoples.(18)
References
1. Ronald, Wright. Stolen Continents: Conquest and Resistance in the Americas, Mariner Book, 1992
2. Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States of America, 1980: Chapter 1: COLUMBUS, THE INDIANS, AND HUMAN PROGRESS.
3 Roxanne, Dunbar-Ortiz. An Indigenous People’s History of the United States. Beacon Press, 2014
4. Dickason, 0. Newbigging, W., “Indigenous Peoples within Canada’, A Concise History. Fourth Edition, Oxford University Press, 2019, p.19S.
5. Milloy, J., “The Early Indian Acts: Developmental Strategy and Constitutional Change’, As Long As the Sunshine and the Water Flows, University of British Columbia Press, 1983, pp.S6-64.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Raphael, D., “Z: Implications for health and quality of life”. Toronto, Ontario, Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc., 2011.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Hick, S., “Introducing Social Welfare: Understanding Income Security.” Thompson Educational Publishing, Inc., 2014.
17. Public Health Agency of Canada. “Key Health Inequalities in Canada: A National Portrait.” Ottawa, Public Health Agency of Canada, 2018, https://www.healthinfobase.canada.ca/health- inequalities
18. Ibid.
Mohammad Momin Khawaja is an enthusiastic graduate student at Athabasca University, Alberta pursuing a Master degree program-MAIS with a global vision of education and cherishes lifelong learning as a discipline and a continuous movement of life for change and adaptability to be a successful futuristic educator. He has authored: “Women in Ancient Cultures” Lulu Press, NC, USA, 2025, and “A World Community Knowing Societies, Cultures and Values, 2024. He is a member of the Canadian Sociology Association, International Journalism Association,USA, and Independent Institute of Journalism (IIJ), USA. As a freelance journalist, he enjoys writing research papers on current social, humanitarian affairs, law and social justice, indigenous people and cultures and Canadian youths education and training.
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