Essay Questions

What does the author identify as the key knowledge about their oppressive colonizers that the colonized learn and how does this knowledge become a strength?

What the colonized inevitably come to learn about those who colonize them through oppression is that these “masters” are liars. They arrive on promises that colonization means bringing “civilization” and through that will come a higher standard of living, better health care, and an opportunity to join the international elite. It never takes very long for them to realized that what colonization really brings is exploitation, death, loss of property and rights, and enforced allegiance to a regime with no respect for their culture. In other words, colonialism operates systemically upon a predicate of lies. How does this realization translate into a strength for the oppressed to be used against their oppressors? Those operating from a position of strength do need to lie about their motivations or processes of operation. The realization that colonists are liars, therefore, becomes also a revelation of their weakness. Once this become apparent, control of native land inexorably becomes a numbers game that the colonists are bound to lose in the modern world of 20th century access to weaponry.

The overarching message of this work posits that colonization cannot bring civilization to a society because colonization and civilization relate to each other in which way?

The author lays out in detail how colonization has been sold since its very beginning with Columbus as almost a completely altruistic endeavor to bring to “savages” the enlightenment of Christianity, western civilization, sophisticated economics, and nobility of building cities rather than living in homes made of dirt. The reality, of course, was far different or, to portray it in the best light possible, far more complex. That latter view is not the one taken by the author, however. Even in consideration the possibility and potential for colonization to bring a better standard of life to native peoples, ultimately the intent and the aim is what must be focused on. And despite any tangential effects of improvement upon life of the oppressed, the oppression alone is singled out as the mechanics of imperialism. Thus, colonization cannot possibly bring civilization anywhere because colonization is the precise opposite of civilization.

Keeping in mind what the author is arguing about the relationship between colonialization and civilization, what becomes the systemic operating paradox of colonial ideology?

As mentioned, the ideological imperative of colonialization by the colonizers is that their technologically advanced superiority makes the delivery of such knowledge a charitable act. For example, colonization surely sped up the evolutionary trek of North American tribes living in teepees or adobe housing living in a more Eurocentric concept of splendor. Or, put another way, where there had been no cities forever, cities began showing up in just a couple of centuries. Even the most hardline supporters of Native American will be hard pressed to argue that life on the Montana range in January is not infinitely easier living in modern architecture than huddling together in the shelter which had existed before.

That is not the issue; the issue is, yes, of course, but at what price? How many native Americans were slaughtered so that a few hundred that survived could make the move from teepee to ranch-style housing with brick fireplace? The paradox at the heart of the colonial ideology is based on the oppositional relationship the author forwards: if the colonizers are not civilized themselves then how can they possibly bring civilization to anyone else? The only way to reconcile this paradox is to make one of the greatest leaps of the imagination possible: civilization means sleeping on a softer pillow in a more temperate shelter and not a whole lot more.