40 Quotes About Decolonization

I'm not here to sugar-coat grief. I'm here to be transformed by it.

The world is expected to take it for granted than an American expat who studied at any 'reputable' American academic institution is smart, well trained, and competent to do a job anywhere around the globe, but the opposite is never true for newcomers in the U.S.

I thought about how in every ‘Third World’ country that gets ‘liberated’ from its dictators, the first things that go up are luxury hotels and residential areas for Western expats and gated communities from which to administer the newly formed governments in places like Baghdad’s Green Zone.

Once upon a time, displaced people had a time and a place. They had a place in which they made plans about what to do with their future and their lives. Their time and place were prematurely destroyed and stolen from them. These people were then forced to exist in times and places that are not theirs. They were forced to learn the art of living and flourishing in the same empire that stole and destroyed their time and place back home.

Some may say it’s tiresome to dwell on the hurt- after all there’s a relentless (if artificial) drive to Stay Positive! in America, to focus only on solutions—yet an essential step in the process of decolonization is hearing the painful stories of the colonized and the exploited, respectfully and with an open heart.

We must all decolonize our minds in Western culture to be able to think differently about nature, abut the destuction humans cause.

The bureaucrats were accountable to their political masters, not accountable to the people whom they were overseeing. And putting it as bluntly as possible, no government ever won votes by spending money on Indians.

... the government had spent more than four times the amount on lawyers [fighting a First Nations family's request for medical treatment] than would have been required to actually do the surgery.

It was further revealed that the government sometimes refuses to pay for certain medications even after a pediatrician has declared their necessity.