- Mar 2021
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neocolonialist strategy—an attempt to accommodate new realities in order to retain the dominance— neocolonialist methods signal victory for the colonized.
Neocolonialist strategy is the idea of accommodating new realities as to retain dominance
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Origin narratives form the vital core of a people’s unifying iden- tity and of the values that guide them. In the United States, the founding and development of the Anglo-American settler-state in- volves a narrative about Puritan settlers who had a covenant with God to take the land.
MYTH 2: Origin Narratives
Puritan covenant with God to take the land
Reinforced by Columbus Myth
- "Columbia," represented by lady, is found everywhere throughout the USA, in names and idea
Reinforced by the "Doctrine of Discovery"
- European nations acquired titles to lands they discovered and Indigenous inhabitants lost natural right to land after Europeans claimed it.
- Law of Nations required the subjugation of all people who diverge from European-derived norms of right conduct
Reinforced by Academia: Threatened by civil rights
Called for "balance," against "moralizing," and pro "culturally relative approach." "There were good and bad people on both sides."
- "MULTICULTURALISM" is used to support the origin story. "We all got along from the beginning and now we are all a big happy nation"
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The ori- gin story of a supposedly unitary nation, albeit now multicultural, remained intact. The original cover design featured a multicolored woven fabric—this image meant to stand in place of the discredited “melting pot.”
Origin Story myth is perpetuated by idea of multiculturalism
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Multiculturalism became the cutting edge of post-civil-rights- movement US history revisionism. For this scheme to work—and affirm US historical progress—Indigenous nations and communities had to be left out of the picture. As territorially and treaty-based peoples in North America, they did not fit the grid of multicultur- alism but were included by transforming them into an inchoate oppressed racial group, while colonized Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans were dissolved into another such group, variously called “Hispanic” or “Latino.” The multicultural approach empha- sized the “contributions” of individuals from oppressed groups to the country’s assumed greatness. Indigenous peoples were thus cred- ited with corn, beans, buckskin, log cabins, parkas, maple syrup, canoes, hundreds of place names, Thanksgiving, and even the con- cepts of democracy and federalism. But this idea of the gift-giving Indian helping to establish and enrich the development of the United States is an insidious smoke screen meant to obscure the fact that the very existence of the country is a result of the looting of an entire continent and its resources.
MULTICULTURALISM: US history revision that emphasizes the "contributions" of ethnic groups to the United States, while obscuring the fact that these groups were instead PLUNDERED of their natural resources - it was not a consensual giving process.
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This approach to history allows one to safely put aside present re- sponsibility for continued harm done by that past and the questions of reparations, restitution, and reordering society.’
Danger of accepting origin myth 2: put asides responsibility for continued harm done by past - puts aside option of reparations, restitution, and reordering of society.
(Why the Origin Myth is currently harmful)
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Perhaps worst of all, some claimed (and still claim) that the colonizer and colonized experienced an “encounter” and engaged in “dialogue,” thereby masking reality with justifications and ratio- nalizations—in short, apologies for one-sided robbery and murder.
Academics attempt to justify settler colonialism and origin MYTH, with idea that there was dialogue between settler and indigenous, when in reality it was one-sided robbery and murder.
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