Colonised lands
The ground under our feet is not a possession or investment, but our living mother
This article first appeared in the Jersey Evening Post, 15 February 2018
People in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA are becoming more aware that the ‘colonisation myth’ that is taught in schools is just that: a myth. Ships out of St Aubin, Cádiz and Plymouth did not find ‘New Worlds’ — they found lands already inhabited by millions of indigenous people. Now they are learning ‘land acknowledgement,’ to recognise the original inhabitants. They might say, ‘This event is taking place on traditional Chickasaw land,’ or ‘We gather today on the occupied territory of the Musqueam people, who have stewarded this land for generations.’
This is so right, so true and so important. But it does not address what we are meant to think and do here, as Europeans whose people did not leave to colonise distant lands. Or maybe who did, but who ended up back in Jersey.
We have to address this ourselves. Understanding the whole story of how our European ancestors attacked the globe and all its inhabitants is at least a lifetime’s work. Going back, you find that similar attacks were made against our indigenous forebears too. The Romans, the Vikings, the Normans, the witch-finders, the Spanish Inquisition, the Land Inclosure Acts, industrialism…
It quickly becomes impossible to distinguish ‘our’ ancestors from ‘their’ ancestors. The oppressors from the oppressed. All we can say is that there was oppression, theft and genocide, and that we were there, in every way, on every side.
There is still oppression, heartless greed, violence, destruction, desecration, pollution and species extinction going on all around us. Sometimes we can still learn from the precious indigenous few who remain, with their fragile, uprooted, half-forgotten knowledge.
Starting to see the land under our feet not as a possession or investment, but as our living mother is a start. Under our laws, when someone owns land they have every right to fence it off, kill it off, pave it over, wage chemical warfare against it, flatten it, drain it, and ultimately, if they are very lucky, to build houses, flats and businesses on it. An indigenous worldview could never understand this.
Who is there to love this land as a living mother? To steward it, listen to it and talk to it? No one if not us who are here today. All you see outside is indeed your land, held in trust for all future generations. We have to make this true, together. With love.
