Colonialism and US III

A locally made concoction for fattening cattle.

The colonial residue that we carry with us into our efforts to share the love of God in Jesus is not always something that is easy to identify.  

A common thread in these discussions of colonialism has often been looking at the many cultural practices that were lost through Westernizing forces, which were primarily exerted through “Missionaries” for a good chunk of time.  Some of what was lost were healthy practices that Westerners misunderstood or scorned simply for being different.  Some were truly good local solutions to local problems.  But Westerners tried to replace them with other “modern” practices that produce more problems, which can’t easily be solved with local resources.  This makes me cringe a bit from the perspective of our CHE method that teaches the long-lasting importance of local solutions with local resources.  

But, some things lost were also unhealthy practices that may be glorified in hindsight as “indigenous” and therefore automatically valuable in a post-modern value system.  Even if they blatantly go against a post-modern sense of personal freedom and gender equality.  And, some “killers” of indigenous culture were not in fact Western but coming through assimilation from other ethnicities or Arab culture.  Which means colonialism isn’t the main contributing factor to everything bad about the world as it is sometimes billed! 

The point of our reflection on colonialism after many organizational workshops is to try to begin to remove our blindness to how we may unconsciously perpetuate its practices.  It’s necessary because colonialism can wear many different disguises.  For example, the Church in many times and places has been instrumental in helping people gain knowledge and freedom of thought.  But colonial power forcing itself on people may disguise itself in the effort to help people gain better knowledge, when it’s actually forcing a new way of valuing people according to paper qualifications.  

Sometimes I find it disguised in my own thinking when I have frustration with people who don’t put value on following a plan or doing things at the right time.  But looking critical at both sides of the situation could show that this is actually a lack of understanding of the social or economic pressures that cause people to do things at different times and in different ways.  Some different behaviors are reflections of healthy cultural ways of being.  And some behaviors are just unhealthy, selfish, and destructive because, as people like to say here “Humans are by nature 9’s, they’ll never fulfill everything to be perfect 10’s.”  Some of the practices it takes a long time for outsiders to understand are actually local solutions that come out of a fuller view of what the problems are in that culture on the ground.  May we be open to looking deeply past our own cultural blindness!

-- El Padre