I had often wondered how to best decolonize my people... It must be done one human being at a time. Without that kind of help, Western society does not allow people to come to terms with their feelings. With honesty and therapy, my people can be made whole again.
Interpretation
Decolonization requires individual healing and honest reflection to address emotional and societal issues.
This quote by Russell Means conveys the importance of personal healing and introspection in the process of decolonization. He suggests that to truly restore and empower marginalized communities, it is necessary to engage with each individual’s emotions honestly, providing therapeutic support that enables them to confront their historical and personal traumas.
In practice
During a workshop on community healing, this quote can serve as a starting point for discussion.
You see the one thing I've always maintained is that I'm an American Indian. I'm not a Native American. I'm not politically correct. Everyone who's born in the Western Hemisphere is a Native American. We are all Native Americans. And if you notice, I put American before my ethnicity. I'm not a hyphenated African-American or Irish-American or Jewish-American or Mexican-American.
Being is a spiritual proposition. Gaining is a material act. Traditionally, American Indians have always attempted to be the best people they could. Part of that spiritual process was and is to give away wealth, to discard wealth in order not to gain.
Being an Indian means living with the land. And the only way we'll be able to do that is to gain our freedom.
A revolution that does not produce a new space has not realized its full potential
If it ain't broke, don't fix it' is the slogan of the complacent, the arrogant or the scared. It's an excuse for inaction, a call to non-arms.
We cannot ensure that women will be free of discrimination in the workplace and everywhere as long as women are not universally defended under our Constitution. As it stands now, the equal rights of women are subject to interpretation of law. That is a risk our mothers, sisters and daughters cannot afford.
So easy to fall into a rut, isn't it? Why should ruts be so comfortable and so unpopular?
If there has been any progress in the Chinese society and politics over the last 20 years, it is all because the citizens have been pushing for change.
We Americans have a chance to become someday a nation in which all racial stocks and classes can exist in their own selfhoods, but meet on a basis of respect and equality and live together, socially, economically, and politically.
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