Natal alienation is the estrangement or disconnection from historical memory which occurs by severing an individual from their kinship traditions, cultural heritage (including language and religion), and economic inheritance through experiences of social death. It creates the conditions in which an individual, now estranged from knowledge of their social heritage, can become a commodity defined by their relationship to systems and structures that often caused and benefit from their very alienation. [1] [2]
The term was coined by sociologist Orlando Patterson in reference to the conditions of African slaves through the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. [1] The natally alienated individual is embodied in the colonized individual who has been forced to reject or forget their own histories, being born into a society which prevents them from participating in or knowing their traditions and conditions them to forget them. [3] [4] It has been described as the inheritance of disinheritance [1] and an existential homelessness. [5]
American-born African enslaved people who were brought to the American colonies experienced high rates of natal alienation. Scholar Cornel West identifies that, while only 4.5% of all Africans imported to the "New World" arrived in North America, this percentage quadrupled "through an incredibly high rate of slave reproduction." As West identifies, this had the following result: "Second- and third-generation Africans in the USA made sense of and gave meaning to their predicament without an immediate relation to African worldviews and customs." [6]
Aboriginal Australians have been described as undergoing extreme forms of natal alienation. As Belinda Wheeler details, "successive removal policies have directly resulted in generations of mothers with 'no prototype' for transmitting the basics of mothering knowledge to their own children, let alone knowledge of traditional Aboriginal worldview, practices, and values." [7] Australia instituted policies in the twentieth century to "eliminate Aborigines through the eugenic expedient of 'breeding them white,'" which was standardized in all of its states by 1937. [8]
The majority of the Indigenous peoples of California experienced natal alienation through the California Genocide by the end of the nineteenth century. Scholar Wendy Cheng writes that they "were reduced to naturally vanishing, picturesque figures in a sentimentalized history." [9]
Huanani-Kay Trask writes that natal alienation creates a psychological dependency for Indigenous peoples: "Generations become addicted to the worst cultural habits of colonial society which increases both, ignorance of, and alienation from the native culture...." [10]
Black is a racialized classification of people, usually a political and skin color-based category for specific populations with a mid- to dark brown complexion. Not all people considered "black" have dark skin; in certain countries, often in socially based systems of racial classification in the Western world, the term "black" is used to describe persons who are perceived as dark-skinned compared to other populations. It is most commonly used for people of sub-Saharan African ancestry, Indigenous Australians and Melanesians, though it has been applied in many contexts to other groups, and is no indicator of any close ancestral relationship whatsoever. Indigenous African societies do not use the term black as a racial identity outside of influences brought by Western cultures.
First Nations is a term used to identify Indigenous peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis. Traditionally, First Nations in Canada were peoples who lived south of the tree line, and mainly south of the Arctic Circle. There are 634 recognized First Nations governments or bands across Canada. Roughly half are located in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia.
Institutional racism, also known as systemic racism, is a form of institutional discrimination based on race or ethnic group and can include policies and practices that exist throughout a whole society or organization that result in and support a continued unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment of others. It manifests as discrimination in areas such as criminal justice, employment, housing, healthcare, education and political representation.
Enculturation is the process by which people learn the dynamics of their surrounding culture and acquire values and norms appropriate or necessary to that culture and its worldviews.
African philosophy is the philosophical discourse produced using indigenous African thought systems. African philosophers are found in the various academic fields of present philosophy, such as metaphysics, epistemology, moral philosophy, and political philosophy. It discusses substantive issues from an African perspective.
Grave robbery, tomb robbing, or tomb raiding is the act of uncovering a grave, tomb or crypt to steal commodities. It is usually perpetrated to take and profit from valuable artefacts or personal property. A related act is body snatching, a term denoting the contested or unlawful taking of a body, which can be extended to the unlawful taking of organs alone.
Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, excluding the ethnically distinct people of the Torres Strait Islands.
Traditional knowledge (TK), indigenous knowledge (IK), folk knowledge, and local knowledge generally refers to knowledge systems embedded in the cultural traditions of regional, indigenous, or local communities.
The Djukun are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
In property law, alienation is the voluntary act of an owner of some property to dispose of the property, while alienability, or being alienable, is the capacity for a piece of property or a property right to be sold or otherwise transferred from one party to another. Most property is alienable, but some may be subject to restraints on alienation.
Indigenous archaeology is a sub-discipline of Western archaeological theory that seeks to engage and empower indigenous people in the preservation of their heritage and to correct perceived inequalities in modern archaeology. It also attempts to incorporate non-material elements of cultures, like oral traditions, into the wider historical narrative. This methodology came out of the global anti-colonial movements of the 1970s and 1980s led by aboriginal and indigenous people in settler-colonial nations, like the United States, Canada, and Australia. Major issues the sub-discipline attempts to address include the repatriation of indigenous remains to their respective peoples, the perceived biases that western archaeology's imperialistic roots have imparted into its modern practices, and the stewardship and preservation of indigenous people's cultures and heritage sites. This has encouraged the development of more collaborative relationships between archaeologists and indigenous people and has increased the involvement of indigenous people in archaeology and its related policies.
Racism in Australia comprises negative attitudes and views on race or ethnicity which are held by various people and groups in Australia, and have been reflected in discriminatory laws, practices and actions at various times in the history of Australia against racial or ethnic groups.
Slavery in New France was practiced by some of the Indigenous populations, which enslaved outsiders as captives in warfare, until European colonization that made commercial chattel slavery become common in New France. By 1750, two-thirds of the enslaved peoples in New France were Indigenous, and by 1834, most enslaved people were African.
During and after the European colonization of the Americas, European settlers practiced widespread enslavement of Indigenous peoples. In the 15th century, the Spanish introduced chattel slavery through warfare and the cooption of existing systems. A number of other European powers followed suit, and from the 15th through the 19th centuries, between two and five million Indigenous people were enslaved, which had a devastating impact on many Indigenous societies, contributing to the overwhelming population decline of Indigenous peoples in the Americas.
The archaeology of religion and ritual is a growing field of study within archaeology that applies ideas from religious studies, theory and methods, anthropological theory, and archaeological and historical methods and theories to the study of religion and ritual in past human societies from a material perspective.
Slavery in Latin America was an economic and social institution that existed in Latin America before the colonial era until its legal abolition in the newly independent states during the 19th century. However, it continued illegally in some regions into the 20th century. Slavery in Latin America began in the pre-colonial period when indigenous civilizations, including the Maya and Aztec, enslaved captives taken in war. After the conquest of Latin America by the Spanish and Portuguese, of the nearly 12 million slaves that were shipped across the Atlantic, over 4 million enslaved Africans were brought to Latin America. Roughly 3.5 million of those slaves were brought to Brazil.
Settler colonialism is a logic and structure of displacement by settlers, using colonial rule, over an environment for replacing it and its indigenous peoples with settlements and the society of the settlers.
Detribalization is the process by which persons who belong to a particular indigenous ethnic identity or community are detached from that identity or community through the deliberate efforts of colonizers and/or the larger effects of colonialism.
Indigenous media can reference film, video, music, digital art, and sound produced and created by and for indigenous people. It refers to the use of communication tools, pathways, and outlets by indigenous peoples for their own political and cultural purposes.
Welfare colonialism is a form of colonialism where investments by the colonizer in the native population, ostensibly intended to improve their quality of life, contribute to the dissolution of indigenous institutions thus perpetuating dependency and creating a permanent underclass. Though usage of the term dates from the 1950s, the concept is often associated with anthropologist Robert Paine, who expanded and developed it while observing the failed economic integration of the native population in Northern Canada.