Decolonizing Perspectives: A Global Interdisciplinary Journey

Supervisor:

• Julia Doornbos

During our exchange semester in Canada (a settler-colonial state), Johanne and Alicja were striked by the lack of their previous knowledge regarding the issue of (de-) colonization - and the silencing of the topic in the European public discourse. This project aims to tackle this gap of public consciousness and academic knowledge.

As a complex problem, we consider colonialism in many areas of the globe to be of intersectional and interdisciplinary character. Resurgence and reconciliation are inherently multi-disciplinary, blending politics, gender studies, sustainability, history, sociology, social psychology anthropology, sustainability, and climate change.

While often being treated as a problem of the past, constituting historically and geographically confined events, it is crucial to shift the debate to acknowledging (settler) colonialism as an ongoing phenomenon with global scope. Dominant academic and scientific knowledge remains within the western paradigm, disregarding alternative epistemologies. Particularly in the context of the climate crisis, the failure of institutions to respect and take seriously.

Indigenous knowledge is evident

This is while the constant fight of Indigenous peoples for a more intensive protection of nature and all beings clashes with ongoing colonial-capitalist projects of resource extraction. Thus we can see that post-colonial thinking and established structures remain problematic today at many levels (individual & (inter-) national, as well as in academia/sciences and world institutions - and at the local/regional level. While the Netherlands is not a settler-colonial society, it carries its colonial history in visible and invisible ways. We see the urgency in bringing awareness to the international community of UCG on Indigenous perspectives that many didn’t hear about, in effort to decolonialize the disciplines underlined in the next section, to address the harms of the past and the present and become better world citizens and critical thinkers.