To fully understand how we ended up with the institutions and social issues that we grapple with today, we have to understand our history. How have systems that serve white supremacy and patriarchy become powerful? Who set these systems in place? How do they affect us today? All of these questions will be explored in this section. We will also cover how colonialism has created current ideas of health and safety and the faults that lie within them.

6.4.1 The Legacy of Colonization

In Chapter 4 we defined colonialism as the policy of military, economic and ideological conquest of one society by another. We defined colonization as the action or process of settling among and establishing control over the indigenous people of an area. The United States is a country founded on European colonization. Today, some places in the world are still colonies or territories of other states. Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory. The people who live there are U.S. citizens. However, they are not allowed to participate in many elections and often do not receive the same kind of federal funding that the recognized states receive. Similarly, the Falkland Islands, small islands off the coast of Argentina, are legally recognized as territories of the United Kingdom and claimed as part of Argentina at the same time.

Learning about colonialism is necessary because we are still feeling the effects of this historical legacy. European world powers established global slavery in this time period. Colonizers killed the people who already lived on the land through disease, war and resettlement. Similarly, colonizers used forced education and relocation as a way of destroying family and community. Indigenous communities around the world still feel the effects of this historical destruction as similar atrocities continue to happen in Indigenous communities across the world. Palestine is a modern example of colonization in action, with devastating and violent effects. The United States was founded by European settlers utilizing the many tools of colonization, resulting in the discrimination and oppression that most of us experience regularly.

In addition to the decimation of Indigenous populations and the land that they lived on, colonization supported a worldview that contributes to ecological devastation today. In this view, land is to be owned and subjugated, rather than tended and cared for. In the words of authors Laura Dominguez and Colin Luoma (who write using UK English):

The widespread plunder of natural resources was a hallmark of colonisation. Nature was something that was to be commodified in order to enrich the colonial power. In turn, indigenous territories were treated as business enterprises, with seemingly unlimited resources to exploit… Only upon the realisation that their activities were causing rapid environmental degradation did colonisers begin to concern themselves with nature conservation.

This brought about early attempts by colonisers to preserve indigenous lands—notwithstanding the fact that indigenous peoples have been conserving their own traditional territories for centuries prior to European contact. Yet the ideology that emerged was that nature was something that should be first exploited, then preserved, but all without the input, involvement, or participation of indigenous populations (Dominguez and Luoma 2020).

An extension of colonization and one of its tools, slavery, has shifted from chattel slavery into the incarceration system. The incarceration system, as mentioned earlier in this chapter, consists of police, prisons, military and surveillance operations in the United States. Currently stated in the 13th amendment of the U.S. constitution is the clause that, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction” (U.S. Const., amend. 13).

6.4.2 Worldviews: Colonized vs. Indigenous

Further, colonization supports a worldview that leads its participants to value individual well being above all else. This leads to a lack of action and concern regarding the well being of our neighbors, plants, and animals who surround us. Although Indigeous people throughout the world have very different cultures, their collective worldview is significantly different from the Western worldview.

We’ve summarized some of the core differences in Indigenous and Western worldviews in the table in figure 6.19. Each worldview defines relationships to wealth and to land. In the Indigenous worldview, land is sacred, to be cared for from generation to generation. Wealth is shared. In the Western worldview, land is owned or controlled, and the purpose of living is to accumulate wealth.

Figure 6.19 Table of Indiginous and Western Worldviews

An example that illustrates the differences between the dominant Western lifestyle today compared to Indigenous or First Nations ways of living is our current economic system, better known as capitalism. We defined capitalism in Chapter 5 as a type of economic and social system in which private businesses or corporations compete for profit, in which goods, services and many beings are defined as private property and in which people sell their labor on the market for a wage.

Chapter 5 explained that capitalism is a result of colonization and is perpetuated by a value system starkly different from the Indigenous worldview. Capitalism requires endless consumption and use of resources, which is not sustainable on a finite planet. Internalized capitalism can be seen in how we consume resources, what we see as valuable forms of work, and what we determine to be basic living standards.

For instance, internalized capitalism can manifest in our lives as the feeling of never having “enough” even if we have all the things we need to survive and, more importantly, thrive. You may have a stable income, a comfortable house, a caring community, and an abundance in most areas of your life yet still feel empty. This feeling can come from internalized capitalism because capitalism itself requires its targeted audience (us) to believe that we always need or want something new through advertisements, consumer culture such as fast fashion, and disposability culture. As mentioned before, this is because capitalism requires relentless consumption in order to maintain its power.

6.4.3 The Myth of the Right to Live

Anthropologist Edward Tyler (1871) was one of the earliest social scientists to define culture, stating that it was “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits” that people learn from other members of their group. In other words, culture is both learned as well as taught. The gradual process of an individual or group learning and adapting to the norms and values of a culture in which they are immersed is called enculturation.

A Western example of something that’s been deeply enculturated is the belief that we must work to earn the right to live. Children are taught from young ages that we must work jobs until our older years to afford our basic necessities, such as food, shelter, water, and acceptance within our communities. This is steadily reinforced throughout adolescence and into adulthood through toys, media, job fairs, career days, and so on. When individuals either are not able or do not want to work, society then punishes the individual by not providing these basic necessities.

Resistance and Resilience
Indigenous or First Nation’s economic systems, in general, have not relied on exponential growth and consumption to lead a healthy lifestyle. Many journals from early colonists describe the Americas as places with lush and ample resources. This is because Indigenous peoples had consistently managed and stewarded the land using techniques that had been perfected throughout generations.

Indigenous resistance to colonialism has occurred and continued around the world since the arrival of colonists. Generally speaking, Indigenous cultures are rooted in place, tradition, and stewardship of the land. Because there are Indigenous peoples on every acre of land that is habitable or has been habitable by humans, this means that each act of destruction to the environment or peoples is also an act of destruction for the Indigenous peoples who are from there.

You have probably read that over 80% of the world’s biodiversity is currently stewarded Indigenous peoples (Raygorodetsky, 2021). This is true, but only because Indigenous peoples have fought, resisted, and created new systems for protecting the land, its inhabitants, and their cultures. And, as stated before, these acts of resistance continue today.

A popular example of Indigenous resistance in the United States was the #NoDAPL protests, otherwise known as Standing Rock (Lakota People’s Law Project, 2022). The NoDAPL movement began when Standing Rock Sioux peoples decided to fight the construction of a pipeline, known as the Dakota Access Pipeline, that would be built on their ancestral land, destroy cultural resources, and violate century old treaties made between the tribe and the U.S. government.

This led to intense protests where Indigenous peoples, allies, and community members from all over the world came to occupy and resist the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. More than 300 people were injured and hundreds were arrested during these protests by the U.S. government (Montare 2018). While the Dakota Access Pipeline is still in commission, the NoDAPL movement paved the way for many contemporary Indigenous resistance movements in North America, such as #StopLine3.

6.4.4 Examples of Colonial Cultural Conceptions of Health and Safety

The colonization of countries across the world has left us detached and afraid of what is part of our nature. Colonial cultural conceptions of health and safety also involve regulation and control by the state. In the United States, these conceptions can be easily identified in our healthcare system. The way that U.S. healthcare coverage is set up is that it is divided into two main categories: public healthcare (government-funded) and private healthcare (privately funded). Even though healthcare is necessary to have a healthy life, it is currently something that can only be accessed easily through wealth.

The belief that healthcare should be something that is paid for instead of something that is a fundamental need goes hand in hand with the sometimes shallow, surface-level approaches to health that are found in our healthcare system. In the U.S., the healthcare system is designed to treat symptoms instead of addressing root causes. An example of this would be the intense treatment of cancer after a diagnosis, instead of working toward a public health goal that fosters low levels of cancer through healthy eating, exercise, and preventative care.

An indigenous worldview encourages that we take a holistic vision and attention to prevention. The First Nations Health Authority of Canada describes these ways:

• Taking responsibility for our own health and wellness
• Balancing mental, emotional, spiritual and physical facets of our lives
• Honoring where we come from: our cultures, traditions, and ourselves
• Knowing traditions, culture and medicine
• Acknowledging that land is what sustains us physically, emotionally, spiritually and mentally
• Receiving family and community as our support base.
  (First Nations Health Authority n.d.)

Another example of these colonial cultural conceptions is the way that the US health care system views and treats childbirth. Childbirth is seen as sterile procedure that can result in stress and sometimes trauma for the person giving birth. It often happens in an unfamiliar environment, like a hospital, with doctors and nurses who are unfamiliar to the person giving birth.

Watch this 11:49-minute video, “Spirit of Birth”, in figure 6.20. It tells the story of the creation of an Indigenous-led and designed birth center in Toronto, Canada. The vision for the center is to provide people having birth knowledge and care from Indigenous midwives and Elders. In the process they are building and regaining control over the birthing process in ways that are culturally valuable to their communities (Tabobondung n.d). What do you hear is the meaning, and value of the birthing process for parents and their communities? What do they need in a birthing facility to express those values and meanings?

Figure 6.20 Spirit of Birth [YouTube Video]

What is important to note is that simply because this is the way that childbirth has been in the United States doesn’t mean that this is how childbirth must be. Childbirth, like many life experiences, can be liberating and an incredible learning opportunity if people are given the tools, support, and care that they need.