The hegemonic Eurocentric paradigms that have informed western philosophy and sciences in the “modern/colonial capitalist/patriarchal world-system” (Grosfoguel 2005; 2006b) for the last 500 hundred years assume a universalistic, neutral, objective point of view. Chicana and black feminist scholars (Moraga and Anzaldúa 1983; Collins 1990) as well as Third World scholars inside and outside the United States (Dussel 1977) reminded us that we always speak from a particular location in the power structures. Nobody escapes the class, sexual, gender, spiritual, linguistic, geographical, and racial hierarchies of the “modern/colonial capitalist/patriarchal world-system“. As feminist scholar Donna Haraway (1988) states, our knowledges are always (...)

During the last 510 years of the “Capitalist/Patriarchal Western- centric/Christian-centric Modern/Colonial World-System” we went from the 16th Century “christianize or I shoot you,” to the 19th Century “civilize or I shoot you,” to 20th Century “develop or I shoot you,” to the late 20th Century “neoliberalize or I shoot you,” and to the early 21st century “democratize or I shoot you.” No respect and no recognition for Indigenous, African, Islamic or other non-European forms of democracy. The liberal form of democracy is the only one accepted and legitimated. Forms of democratic alterity are rejected. If the non-European population does not (...)

The old Marxist paradigm of infrastructure and superstructure is replaced by a historical-heterogeneous structure (Quijano 2000), or a “heterarchy” (Kontopoulos 1993), that is, an entangled articulation of multiple hierarchies, in which subjectivity and the social imaginary is not derivative but constitutive of the structures of the world-system (Grosfoguel 2002). In this conceptualization, race and racism are not superstructural or instrumental to an overarching logic of capitalist accumulation; they are constitutive of capitalist accumulation at a world-scale. The “colonial power matrix” is an organizing principle involving exploitation and domination exercized in multiple dimensions of social life, from economic, sexual, or gender (...)

The old division between culture and political-economy as expressed in post-colonial studies and political-economy approaches is overcome (Grosfoguel 2002). Post-colonial studies conceptualize the capitalist world-system as being constituted primarily by culture, while political-economy places the primary determination on economic relations. In the “coloniality of power” approach, what comes first, “culture or the economy,,” is a false dilemma, a chicken-egg dilemma that obscures the complexity of the capitalist world-system (Grosfoguel 2002).

National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth: whatever may be the headings used or the new formulas introduced, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon. At whatever level we study it - relationships between individuals, new names for sports clubs, the human admixture at cocktail parties, in the police, on the directing boards of national or private banks - decolonization is quite simply the replacing of a certain “species“ of men by another “species“ of men. Without any period of transition, there is a total, complete, and absolute substitution. It is true that we could equally (...)

Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a program of complete disorder. But it cannot come as a result of magical practices, nor of a natural shock, nor of a friendly understanding. Decolonization, as we know, is a historical process: that is to say that it cannot be understood, it cannot become intelligible nor clear to itself except in the exact measure that we can discern the movements which give it historical form and content. Decolonization is the meeting of two forces, opposed to each other by their very nature, which in fact owe (...)

Decolonization never takes place unnoticed, for it influences individuals and modifies them fundamentally. It transforms spectators crushed with their inessentiality into privileged actors, with the grandiose glare of history's floodlights upon them. It brings a natural rhythm into existence, introduced by new men, and with it a new language and a new humanity. Decolonization is the veritable creation of new men. But this creation owes nothing of its legitimacy to any supernatural power; the “thing“ which has been colonized becomes man during the same process by which it frees itself.

In decolonization, there is therefore the need of a complete calling in question of the colonial situation. If we wish to describe it precisely, we might find it in the well- known words: “The last shall be first and the first last.“ Decolonization is the putting into practice of this sentence. That is why, if we try to describe it, all decolonization is successful.
The naked truth of decolonization evokes for us the searing bullets and bloodstained knives which emanate from it. For if the last shall be first, this will only come to pass after a murderous and decisive (...)

During the period of decolonization, the native's reason is appealed to. He is offered definite values, he is told frequently that decolonization need not mean regression, and that he must put his trust in qualities which are well-tried, solid, and highly esteemed. But it so happens that when the native hears a speech about Western culture he pulls out his knife - or at least he makes sure it is within reach. The violence with which the supremacy of white values is affirmed and the aggressiveness which has permeated the victory of these values over the ways of life and (...)

At the level of individuals, violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect. Even if the armed struggle has been symbolic and the nation is demobilized through a rapid movement of decolonization, the people have the time to see that the liberation has been the business of each and all and that the leader has no special merit. From thence comes that type of aggressive reticence with regard to the machinery of protocol which young governments quickly show. When the people (...)

to move beyond this [Euro-centric] system the struggle cannot be just anti- capitalist but an anti-systemic decolonial liberation. Anti-systemic decolonization and liberation cannot be reduced to only one dimension of social life such as the economic system (capitalism) like it happened with the twentieth century Marxist left. It requires a broader transformation of the sexual, gender, spiritual, epistemic, economic, political, linguistic, aesthetic, pedagogical and racial hierarchies of the “modern/colonial western-centric Christian-centric capitalist/patriarchal world-system.” The “coloniality of power” perspective challenges us to think about social change and social transformation in a non- reductionist way.

I believe that world-system analysis needs to decolonize its epistemology by taking seriously the subaltern side of the colonial difference: the side of the periphery, the workers, women, gays/lesbians, racialized/colonial subjects, homosexuals/lesbians and anti-systemic movements in the process of knowledge production. This means that although world-system takes the world as a unit of analysis, it is thinking from a particular perspective in the world. Still, world-system analysis has not found a way to incorporate subaltern knowledges in processes of knowledge production. Without this there can be no decolonization of knowledge and no utopistics beyond Eurocentrism. The complicity of the social (...)

‘Decolonization’ has been defined as a process of freeing individuals and society from the economic, political and cultural effects of colonization. Much of the research literature on educational decolonization has been in the fields of arts, humanities and social sciences with regard to refocusing curricula on local content and indigenous knowledges. However, there is a growing interest in the decolonization of STEM curricula with a view to more inclusive curricular practices. The literature on the decolonization of engineering curricula has four general themes. The first relates to the knowledge that underpins the various engineering disciplines. From a historical perspective there (...)

Reimagining the focus and direction of archaeological research pertaining to Indigenous societies the world over, she [Sonya Atalay] described core tenets of a decolonized archaeology: collaboration, the decentering of colonial histories and foregrounding of Indigenous knowledge production, teaching, and acknowledging the primacy of Indigenous interests and stewardship as well as the deeply colonial lenses through which past and present-day Indigenous societies are typically viewed.

In Faye Harrison’s groundbreaking edited volume Decolonizing Anthropology (2010), she argues that in order for the field of anthropology to radically transform, it must be decolonized and democratized. One way to do so is to take into account the views of scholars who are peripheralized. Drawing on W. E. B. Du Bois’s concepts of second-sightedness and double consciousness, Harrison (2010) proposes that anthropologists who are on one hand a member of Western society but on the other belong to an oppressed social category have multiple consciousnesses and play an important role in decolonizing the field. Such anthropologists may have heightened (...)

“Improvement and change are often excruciatingly slow, and a great deal of work and struggle remains,” Atalay admitted in a preface to the 2006 AIQ issue. In her framing, this work begins with the exposure of the Western, colonial “lens” and the power and access afforded in the name of Western science, but less certain is how epistemology, methods, and interpretation might need to change in order to decolonize in a meaningful way. (...) First, we address the logics of settler colonialism structuring and persisting in the practice and theory of archaeology, what we call “epistemic colonialism.” The collection of (...)

We argue that an archaeology that remains a discipline unto itself cannot be decolonized, and practitioners should seek ways to “undiscipline” it.

On the threat hand, decolonization in real terms should address land return and repatriation, circumstances that many older archaeologists have regarded as the death of archaeology. The enduring trope of Western science (e.g., archaeology) versus spiritualism associated closely with Indigenous communities continues to guide archaeological and public imaginings about how Indigenous communities associate and, more often, “interfere” with the places, people, and things that archaeologists presume to study.

I feel it is critical that we think carefully about what it is that we are calling for in decolonizing archaeology, and other Western-dominated forms of discourse and practice (history, museums, sociology, etc.). In addressing this issue, I argue as both Abiola Irele and Peter R. Schmidt have that we must sometimes use the master’s tools (in this case critique and aca- demic scholarship) to create a counter-discourse to Western approaches that have consistently worked to destroy or silence our Indigenous ways of knowing. There are numerous concepts and areas of traditional Indigenous knowledge that deserve further attention and research (...)

Part of the practice of decolonizing archaeology is to research Indigenous traditional knowledge and practices and to utilize them, as Cavender Wilson describes, “for the benefit of all humanity.” There is a great deal of knowledge and wisdom in these practices and teachings that has the power to benefit our own Indigenous communities as well as others globally. Traditional Indigenous knowledge holds in it a wisdom, some of which is appropriate to share and can help to build strength for other communities. Thus a decolonizing archaeology must take as one of its goals the work of bringing these concepts to (...)

Integral to this work is the realization and acknowledgement that Western ways of knowing are not in any way superior or natural - they are produced and reproduced through daily practice. As such, these ways of knowing and understanding the world can be disrupted, changed, and improved upon. As all aspects of human life and culture, knowledge and practices associated with its production and reproduction are not static but are constantly changing. Through Indigenous archaeology research as part of a global decolonizing practice, it is possible to find effective ways to regain our traditional knowledge, epistemologies, and practices and bring (...)

An inter-cultural North-South dialogue cannot be achieved without a decolonization of power relations in the modern world. A horizontal dialogue as opposed to the vertical monologue of the West requires a transformation in global power structures.

We made our liberation and we drove out the colonizers. Now we need to decolonize our minds. That's it exactly. We need to decolonize the mind because if we do not, our thinking will be in conflict with the new context evolving from the struggle for freedom

Will we recover? Yes. For violence, like Achilles' lance, can heal the wounds that it has inflicted.

The methodology we used to explore decolonizing a curriculum comprised the following phases:
1. Develop a socially just framework to reason about curriculum design.
2. Represent a traditional curriculum based on structured interviews with lecturers using a combined Activity Theory/Social Justice framework.
3. Identify potential scenarios of decolonized curricula through a process of interviews with faculty involved in teaching computer engineering, industry partners who employ graduates from the program, and surveys of fourth year/newly graduated electrical engineering students.
4. Formulate a decolonized curriculum structure that represents the insights from the research participants.
5. Use ‘fictive scripting’ to forecast the outcomes (...)

the logic of settler colonialism is as much bound up in the thinking and routine techniques of archaeology as it is simultaneously saturated in spaces beyond the boundaries of most field and laboratory archaeological work. While a growing number of Native and non-Native archaeologists continue to strive for a decolonized archaeology, we can also point to a few compelling examples of structural changes that may ultimately help decenter archaeology’s colonial episteme. In 2019 Canada enacted the Impact Assessment Act, designed in part to reinforce government commitments to Canada’s First Nations by mandating project planners to consider Indigenous traditional knowledge alongside (...)

Of course, much must still be done to advance “change from the inside.” As a core component of Atalay’s original call for a decolonized archaeology, we believe that pedagogical work is still needed, specifically teaching “indigenous archaeology” courses and training students in decolonizing field, laboratory, and collections-based research. Atalay’s model for community-based participatory research takes inspiration from the Anishinaabe concept of gikinawaabi (passing/sharing of knowledge from elders to youth) and Paolo Freire's popular education approach to empower oppressed communities by conducting research cooperatively and producing knowledge that is relevant to those communities. Quite successfully, Atalay peers beyond the tools and (...)

Indigenization at the UR [University of Regina] is understood as “The transformation of the existing academy by including Indigenous knowledges, voices, critiques, scholars, students and materials as well as the establishment of physical and epistemic spaces that facilitate the ethical stewardship of a plurality of Indigenous knowledges and practices so thoroughly as to constitute an essential element of the university. It is not limited to Indigenous people, but encompasses all students and faculty, for the benefit of our academic integrity and our social viability” (Indigenous Advisory Circle, University of Regina).

Below are 100 Ways to begin discussion and action with your faculty colleagues. This list is not exhaustive, and is informed by both the theory and practice of Indigenizing and decolonizing the academy. (…)
62. Critically exam colonization and its effects
63. Deconstruct the construct of racism
64. Deconstruct the neutrality of whiteness
65. Practice challenging notions of colorblindness and meritocracy
66. Practice challenging notions that “it all happened a long time ago, get over it”
67. Identify, name and work to correct White dominance in the curriculum design, intended
outcomes and resource material selection
68. “But I teach other (...)

This article combines traditional avenues of bioarchaeological research with Black feminist theory to decolonize identified skeletal collections housed in museums. Inspired by the activism of Decolonize This Place (DTP), I put the remains of Black women who were dissected in Progressive Era New York City into conversation with Black feminist theorists and artists. I argue that to “flesh in” the lives of these long anonymized and disarticulated women, it is essential to perform interdisciplinary and decolonizing work that is inspired by Black women. The field of biological anthropology will benefit from moving past privileging “scientific” knowledge and considering what the (...)