#decolonization is not a metaphor

[wiisagi-maiingan]

"Land back" is not a metaphor.

Decolonization is not a metaphor.

The end goal of decolonialist movements is the dissolution of settler states and the renewal of indigenous land stewardship and sovereignty.

"Decolonizing your mind" does not involve watering down indigenous activism to appeal to settler sensibilities.

#decolonization #land back #decolonization is not a metaphor

[lazydally09]

This is a video about indigeneity in video games and uses the Essay "Decolonization is not a metaphor". It only has about 2.3k views.

This is my first time on tumblr and my first post. Thx and take care.

#decolonization #indigenous solidarity #white mountain apache #turtle island #indigenous #native american #first nations #land back #video essay #decolonialism #decolonization is not a metaphor #first post #youtube video #video games #Youtube

[thefamiliarstrangers100]

Hmm. So, you’re telling me, instead of defending a land ‘promised to you by God Himself’, you’re choosing to flee from it? You’re choosing to abandon it just like that? It’s giving wussy occupiers.

On the other hand, Palestinians have been defending it for decades at the expense of their own lives and the lives of their loved ones. Wait a minute, sounds like true natives to me.

#free palestine #let gaza live #i stand with palestine #decolonization is not a metaphor #israel is an apartheid state #end the occupation #Iran #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #palestine

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Now you know.

Believe them when they tell you what they're up to.

#Wilfred Reilly #decolonization #ethnic cleansing #decolonization is not a metaphor #genocide #religion is a mental illness

[piizunn]

i hope that someone leaves the pope in a car the heat wave while he is visiting amiskwaciy waskahikan (beaver hills house) colonially known as edmonton, alberta. (this post is explicitly pro-nickelback, francis must learn the culture)

#all my friends are wishing violence upon the pope and it’s incredibly funny #this is based on a conversation i had with a. friend #pope francis #reconciliation #reconciliation is dead #land back #indigenous #turtle island #fnmi #first nations #métis #inuit #decolonization #decolonization is not a metaphor #nickleback

[blue-village]

Directly and indirectly benefitting from the erasure and assimilation of Indigenous peoples is a difficult reality for settlers to accept. The weight of this reality is uncomfortable; the misery of guilt makes one hurry toward any reprieve. In her 1998 Master’s thesis, Janet Mawhinney analyzed the ways in which white people maintained and (re)produced white privilege in self-defined anti-racist settings and organizations. She examined the role of storytelling and self-confession - which serves to equate stories of personal exclusion with stories of structural racism and exclusion - and what she terms ‘moves to innocence,’ or “strategies to remove involvement in and culpability for systems of domination” (p. 17). Mawhinney builds upon Mary Louise Fellows and Sherene Razack’s (1998) conceptualization of, ‘the race to innocence’, “the process through which a woman comes to believe her own claim of subordination is the most urgent, and that she is unimplicated in the subordination of other women” (p. 335). Mawhinney’s thesis theorizes the self-positioning of white people as simultaneously the oppressed and never an oppressor, and as having an absence of experience of oppressive power relations (p. 100). This simultaneous self-positioning afforded white people in various purportedly anti-racist settings to say to people of color, “I don’t experience the problems you do, so I don’t think about it,” and “tell me what to do, you’re the experts here” (p. 103). “The commonsense appeal of such statements,” Malwhinney observes, enables white speakers to “utter them sanguine in [their] appearance of equanimity, is rooted in the normalization of a liberal analysis of power relations” (ibid.). In the discussion that follows, we will do some work to identify and argue against a series of what we call ‘settler moves to innocence’. Settler moves to innocence are those strategies or positionings that attempt to relieve the settler of feelings of guilt or responsibility without giving up land or power or privilege, without having to change much at all. In fact, settler scholars may gain professional kudos or a boost in their reputations for being so sensitive or self-aware. Yet settler moves to innocence are hollow, they only serve the settler.

- Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang, Decolonization is not a metaphor (2012)

#settler colonialism #decolonisation #decolonization #land back #decolonization is not a metaphor #lukemisiani

[vinduri]

the tuunbaq from the terror to the night king pipeline of a frost-born undead being who is yet carrier of a certain purity in the way that they're both agents of nature, inexorable, about as merciful as an avalanche or a landslide, who do not understand good or evil only the mission they were created to accomplish which is eradicate the cancer that is humanity

#THE NIGHT KING. #except that tuunbaq also has a decolonizing finality that #the night king lacks because he's a metaphor for climate change #in a broader sense

[drunk-on-starlight]

I'm not gonna say much about israel/palestine but you'd think anyone living in the US who isn't native would be a lot more cautious about what they're willing to support in the name of decolonization.

#like. you guys all get that unless you're native american you're also a settler right. #Broadly speaking anyways. I know there's some nuance to it #For people quoting decolonization is not a metaphor you'd expect some to be a tad more self-aware

[3025-jasmines]

decolonization is not a metaphor; decolonization is violent. solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Gaza and the rest of Palestine. we will see a free Palestine in our lifetime

#palestine #free palestine #free gaza

[zedecksiew]

DECOLONISING D&D

In 2019, after seeing yet another round of alarmist discourse in Xwitter about how Dungeons & Dragons is FULL of COLONIALIST tropes and patterns, and needs to be revised, SCRUBBED of its PROBLEMATIC FILTH---I rage-tweeted this brainfart:

"Decolonising D&D"

I've seen this thread round the community, since. Humza K quotes it in Productive Scab-picking: On Oppressive Themes in Gaming. Prismatic Wasteland quotes it in Apolitical RPGs Don't Exist. Most recently, it was referenced in a 1999AD post about Western TTRPGs (an interesting discussion on its own merit; one that already has a counterpoint from Sandro / Fail Forward.)

If folks are still referring to it five years later, maybe I should give the thread a little more credit? Perhaps the fart miasma has crystalised into something concrete.

In the interest of record / saving this thought from the ephemerality of Xwitter, here is the text in full, properly paragraphed, and somewhat more cleanly expressed:

+++

"DECOLONISING D&D"

Firstly: saying "D&D is colonialist" is similar to saying: "the English language is colonialist".

If your method of decolonising RPGs is to abandon D&D---well, some folks abandon English; they don't want to work in the language of the coloniser. More power to them!

For those who want to continue using the "language" of D&D---

Going forth into the "wild hinterland" (as if this weren't somebody's homeland);

to "seek treasure" (as if this didn't belong to anybody);

and "slay monsters" (monsters to whom?)

Yeah. There's some problematic stuff here, and definitely these aspects should make more people uncomfortable.

But! I think it is an error to "decolonise D&D" by scrubbing such content from the game.

That feels like erasure; like an unwillingness to face history / context; like a way to appease one's own settler guilt.

Do you live in the West? Do you live in any Asian urban metropole? White or Person of Colour(tm)---you are already complicit in colonialist / capitalist (yes, of course they are inextricably linked) behaviour. (I can't speak for urban metropoles elsewhere, but I bet they are similar centres of extraction.)

Removing such patterns from the TTRPGs you play might let you feel better, at your game table. But won't change what you are.

I think it is more truthful and more useful NOT to avert one's eyes from D&D's colonialism.

The fact that going forth into the hinterland to seek treasure and slay monsters is a thing, and fucking fun, tells us valuable things about the shape and psychology of colonialism. Why conquistadors in the past did it; why liberal foreign policy, corporations, and post-colonial societies do it today.

Speaking personally:

I write stuff that evokes / deals with the context I'm in---Southeast Asia. An intrinsic part of that is looking at the ways colonial violence has happened to us---as well as the ways / reasons we now, supposedly free, perpetrate it on others.

A long chain of suffering. Heavy stuff.

I also write for people who want to have fun / kill monsters / pretend to be elves, of course. But for those people who want to consider serious stuff like colonialism: I offer no FIGHT THE POWER righteousness, no good feeling, no answers.

Only discomfort. Because the truth is uncomfortable.

Here's a screenshot of the Author's Note for Lorn Song of the Bachelor:

"Any text inspired by Southeast Asia has to reckon with colonialism ... This text presents a difficult situation; there are no easy solutions. "... If I offered a mechanical incentive for you to fight colonial invaders, you wouldn’t be making a moral decision, but a mercenary one. "The choice you face should echo ... the kind of calculus my grandparents faced."

I stand by that.

Also: might we be more precise and more careful about using the term "decolonising", please?

Here I quote Tuck and Yang's landmark and (sadly) still trenchant "Decolonization is not a metaphor":

"Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies ..."

+++

Further Reading

So this post isn't just me reheating a hot take, here are some touchstone writings from around the TTRPG community about colonialism as a subject and mode of play in games:

+

"Jim Corbett was called upon to hunt down another fifty maneaters over the course of the next 35 years. Together, those tigers had killed over 2000 people, for much the same reasons as the Champawat Tiger - injury, desperation, starvation, and habitat loss. Would you look at that. The root cause was British colonialism."

D&D Doesn't Understand What Monsters Are from Throne of Salt

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"Another effect of having colonizers in my setting would be giving players the opportunity to drive them away from the islands, their home. This maybe just be for the catharsis. After all, isn’t catharsis a big part of why we play roleplaying games?"

I’m Adding Colonizers To My Setting from Goobernut's Blog

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"When you have a slime boy and the other characters are a really fat lizard and one's playing Humpty Dumpty, it completely shatters the straight-faced serious authoritarian illusion of race, and replaces it with complete fucking nonsense. I love the idea of proliferating the number and types of "races" into absurdity, to the point where the entire logical structure of it collapses in on itself and race as a category ceases to become coherent or meaningful in any sense."

Interview with Ava Islam - Designer of the RPG Errant from Ava Islam / The Lost Bay

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"Perhaps most critically, the fundamental basis of power is not land or even money but manpower. That’s what local rulers fight over, and what Chinese commercial networks export, in return for unique island products. It’s what the European colonists really need (even if it’s not what they most desire). There is rich loot to be grabbed in the form of spices, Spanish silver, Indian gold, sea cucumbers (the Chinese love ’em), perfumes, dyes, cloth etc. so there’s ample opportunity for piracy, trade and smuggling, but the key to long-term success – the key to independent survival – is nakedly and unquestionably uniting people."

Counter-colonial Heistcrawl: previous high scores from Richard's Dystopian Pokeverse

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"They worked their own land—which they dispossessed from American Indians—or became small shop owners or opportunistic gold diggers or bounty hunters or itinerant ranchers. To me, substituting these situations for one ruled by industrial monopoly ignores that the Wild West is a perfect example of how capitalism operates outside of (or prior to) mass industry, instead being composed of self-employers and self-sustainers."

Fantastic Detours - Frontier Scum from Traverse Fantasy / Bones of Contention

+

"... using the Western framing and D&D's baked-in imperialist and capitalist structure to get people earnestly participating in the experience of forming imperial power structures and the early roots of regional capitalism ... The PCs aren't the drifters on the train or the townsfolk watching with apprehension - they're the railroad itself."

An Arrow for the General: Confronting D&D-as-Western in the Kalahari from A Most Majestic Fly Whisk

+++

#colonialism #theory #ttrpgs #d&d #politics #lorn song of the bachelor

[leohtttbriar]

the aesthetic romanticism of this episode. the deep love for discovery. the decolonization allegory which is not so much a 1-to-1 allegory, so to speak, because sisko proving that ancient bajorans had not only the technology but the sheer Wonder and Curiosity to venture into space is a metaphor for speaking against any number of white supremacist "histories" deriving from imperialistic paradigms since the age of colonization---

to provide the counter-colonization narrative with a space-ship that sails on the impulse of photons (a very real and possible engineering for space-flight--like NASA is building ships like that) is wonderful. this story about the ancient people who thought to travel to space and push their spacecraft through space off the force of light, and then sisko proving to everyone not only its possibility but its historical fact, was sweet and interesting and full of feeling.

it's all as if to say: to engage whole-heartedly with an episteme of decolonization is to engage whole-heartedly with an episteme of curiosity and discovery and love for What Is.

#ds9 #the Historical setting for this show is so interesting and there are some really rich moments coming from it #star trek

[damnesdelamer]

DECOLONIAL ACTION READING

I recently compiled these to add to a comrade’s post about Land Back, but actually I think they deserve their own post as well.

Amílcar Cabral - Return To The Source

Frantz Fanon - The Wretched Of The Earth

Hô Chí Minh - archive via Marxists.org

Thomas King - The Inconvenient Indian

Abdullah Öcalan - Women’s Revolution & Democratic Confederalism

Edward Said - The Question Of Palestine

Thomas Sankara - archive via Marxists.org

Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang - Decolonization Is Not A Metaphor

Other key names in postcolonial theory and its practical application include:

Sara Ahmed

Homi K. Bhabha

Aimé Césaire

Albert Memmi

Jean-Paul Sartre

Léopold Séder Senghor

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

All of these will help you interpret and confront the realities of colonisation, and ideally help us understand and extend solidarity to comrades around the globe. Decolonise your mind, and don't stop there!

#land back #postcolonial #postcolonialism #postcolonial theory #decolonization #decolonize #decolonise #decolonisation #Edward Said #Tuck & Yang #Frantz Fanon #Amilcar Cabral #Free Ocalan #Sankara #Ho Chi Minh #Thomas Sankara #Abdullah Ocalan #original #Thomas King #Eve Tuck #K. Wayne Yang

[lazydally09]

So I use YouTube for news most times. I'm subscribed to Indian Country Today. It's a YT channel that goes over Native American and other indigenous news in America but it is a part of Arizona State University. I've watched the news from ICT for over a year now but if your interested in Native American and indigenous focused news give Indian Country Today at try. I see them as a small news organization that can't cover all indigenous peoples and their News but I want to share where I get some of my news on other Indigenous people.

#decolonization is not a metaphor #indigenous rights #indigenous solidarity #indigenous sovereignty #news #youtube video #building community #native american #current events #try something new #turtle island #decolonialism #decolonization #representation #white mountain apache #first nations #native #ndn #liberation #indigenous peoples #Youtube

[thefamiliarstrangers100]

“The sooner we realize that some of these nations and influential organizations, including the UN, are not as powerless as they may seem; rather, they undoubtedly benefit from conflicts of interest that won’t allow them to step in or charge N3tanyahu for international crimes against humanity, the easier it will be for us to stop expecting humanitarian intervention from them.

They are well aware of the consequences. If they were genuinely concerned about human rights violations, why did they allow the occupying state to violate them in the first place? Why did they not find a solution to this and punish the criminals when these violations have been occurring before their eyes for the past 75 years of the Israeli occupation of Palestine? It’s not like this situation suddenly escalated out of nowhere. Where were these organizations for all these years?

They’re deliberately choosing not to intervene and mandate a ceasefire because almost every single nation, including powerful organizations like the UN, has an equal stake in the Palestinian genocide. They’re feeding themselves off of the Israeli war crimes.

I don’t know how else to explain this complicity or view this situation from a legal or political perspective, but I do know that we’re not as uninformed as they think we are. I do understand the power of collective resistance. We do have the power to prevent history from repeating itself. We do have the power to change the narrative. We can’t let future generations wonder how we allowed this genocide to take place. I don’t want our kids to view us as a generation that bragged so much about its progressiveness, is also the same generation that enabled a literal genocide during their time.

We can’t be known as bystanders when we do have the ability to stop these horrors from taking place. I know you and I are not the ones in authority. We are just ordinary individuals, with regular jobs, but the least we can do is educate ourselves and others. The people of Palestine need us. The least we can do is use social media as a weapon to spread the truth. The least we can do is join protests and be so loud with our voices that those in power have no choice but to listen. The least we can do is be the voice for the oppressed. The least we can do is be the change we want. We’re revolutionaries, people. Let’s act as one.”

— Syeda Zehra Fatima

#Free Palestine #Free Gaza #Israel Is An Apartheid State #I Stand With Palestine #Gaza Under Attack #Decolonization Is Not A Metaphor #poets on tumblr #writers on tumblr #female writers #poets #writers #writers and poets #poetscommunity

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

==

Believe them when they tell you what they're up to.

#Christina Buttons #woke jihad #decolonization #decolonization is not a metaphor #genocide #ethnic cleansing #religion is a mental illness

[jewish-sideblog]

I think it's very funny when people on tumblr tell me that "decolonisation is not a metaphor". Because, uh, yeah. I know that. My ancestors were colonised and stripped of our native lands, forced to assimilate and lose our culture, forced to convert and lose our religion. Every day I work to undo that damage. Every day I study Hebrew because my family could not do so safely under colonialism. Every day I pray to a G-d that my people could not safely worship under colonialism. Every day I study and embrace ancient Jewish ways of learning, thinking and being that were lost because of colonialism. I share this knowledge with my family, with my friends, and with my community. As an academic, I am actively involved in attempting to unmake the violent and continued coloniality of my people's homeland, hoping to undo the damage caused by Brits, Romans and Turks. I do that for the benefit of native peoples in the land-- all of them. Jews, Arabs, Druze, Samaritans and Bedu all deserve equality and peace. Decolonization isn't a metaphor to me. It's a constant way of life.

And what are you, non-indigenous American goy on tumblr, doing for your decolonization? Are you learning the Cherokee language? Sioux? Muscogee? Do you spend your spare time meeting with the indigenous tribes local to your area? Do you push your representatives to help those tribes have greater access to land, healthcare, and autonomy? Can you even list the names of the native peoples whose land you walk on without looking them up?

Or does your "decolonisation" look like an occasional land acknowledgement, reblogging lip-service posts about the plights of indigenous communities, and using your political views to justify attacking Jews on the internet? 'Cause patting yourself on the back for that sure looks like a metaphor to me.