magazine 2021
Toxic Traces of Colonialism in Education, Religion, and Global Health
By Medha Nagasubramanian, Raiaab Ajamal, and Oliver Polichini
Neocolonialism in Modern Global Health
Colonialism has had a serious impact on the health of indigenous people around the globe. When European explorers first arrived in the New World, they rapidly decimated the native population, largely due to the deadly diseases they carried like smallpox and tuberculosis. Missionaries and invading forces with underlying motives established the healthcare system, effectively destroying native healthcare practices. Colonizers in Africa and the Carribean frequently took advantage of native people, often using them for medical experimentation. Although these events are well-known and condemned today, the effect neocolonialism has on modern global health remains virtually unknown. Public health “experts” from former colonial powers often offer advice on how to improve the healthcare systems of former colonies with little knowledge of the culture or history of these nations. Nations like Canada and Australia, with significant populations of indigenous people, have healthcare systems designed for the benefit of white people with little input or representation of native people.
One major way in which neocolonialism impacts global healthcare is through consulting. Frequently, public health graduates from Western powers visit former colonies and offer recommendations to improve healthcare systems of former colonies. These “recommendations” are not based on any knowledge of the culture or traditions of the nation and have minimal input from local experts. While perhaps these individuals have better intentions, these actions are not very different from colonizers of the past who forced native people to conform to their healthcare practices with no regard for indigenous input and traditions. The idea that Western public health experts know what is best for former colonies is simply a manifestation of neocolonialism. Additionally, most major global health organizations and research facilities have headquarters in the West even if their focus is in the global South, like the World Health Organization and others. Medical journals that feature research about former colonies, like the Lancet, have primarily white writers, editors and publishers.
Neocolonialism also impacts the national health systems of various countries. For example, Australia, the home of a sizable aboriginal population, has a healthcare system designed around the needs of white people. Indigenous people are forced to conform to Western health standards with a lack of consideration for their traditional practices, often leading to worse healthcare outcomes. The legacy of colonialism is also visible in the Nunavut people of Canada. Systemic racism enforced by Canada’s healthcare system has caused a tuberculosis rate eleven times the national average. Unfortunately, Canada has only addressed this problem in recent years. Most doctors for indigenous people are not indigenous themselves, and generally, native people have little representation in healthcare.
There have been many measures suggested to address these issues, although in many cases, proper implementation has yet to occur. For example, many have attempted to expand global health institutions in developing nations, such as the Africa Health Research Institute in South Africa. There are also initiatives dedicated to expanding the presence of experts from the Global South in international health conversations, such as Emerging Voices in Global Health. Additionally, recommendations from western experts who have minimal experience with developing countries have begun to be discouraged, as has “voluntourism”, which also perpetuates neocolonialism and can worsen many local issues. Despite all of this, colonialism’s impact on global health today has only attracted recognition recently, and many years will pass before the world sees a significant improvement in healthcare for indigenous groups.
Colonialism, Religion, and Race-Related Conflict
As slavery became more economically important in the 15th century, human trafficking shaped the societal structure in Asia and the Americas. Africa was a key continent for exploitation, and European interference in the continent only grew throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Berlin Conference, organized by the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, arbitrarily divided Africa into distinct regions that European countries would quickly claim as their own. This division disregarded tribal allyship and put enemy tribes under the same rule. Religious and cultural conflicts were already part of these tribes’ cultures. Yet, they directly encountered an imposition of a new culture and had no way to defend themselves. Thus, as vulnerability grew, so did the cultural colonization of white people onto many African people.
With most authority developing its spiritual works by oral history, custom and practice, African religions and spiritual rituals produced no written works, which according to a eurocentric view, represented lack of proper religious observance and preparation for executing rituals. Over time, the exposure of native tribes to both Islam and Christianity were incorporated into traditional native rituals. These two major religions have grown more prominent in the 20th century, an almost irreversible process to the pluralistic nature of African religions. According to Jacob Olupona, professor of indigenous African religions at Harvard Divinity School and professor of African and African-American studies in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Science, “If we lose traditional African religions, we would also lose or continue to seriously undermine the African practice of rites of passage such as the much cherished age-grade initiations, which have for so long integrated and brought Africans together under a common understanding, or worldview.” He adds, “Foreign religions simply don’t have that same connection to the African continent.”
In Latin America, indigenous groups experienced similar religious ingratiation. As European colonizers conquered Mexico, for example, they scrutinized the Aztec festival, El Día de Los Muertos. Currently, both the misinterpretation and the demonization of the Día de los Muertos are outside the Latin American, especially the Mexican, perception. Festivities in Meso-America observing the past lives of ancestors have occurred for almost three thousand years. The largest festival, which took place in the entire ninth month of the Aztec calendar (August according to the Georgian calendar), developed into what is now known as the Mexican Day of the Dead. However, there have been many changes, most of them irreversible.
The Aztecs were the major Indigenous group in what is now known as Latin America when colonizers took over the land and committed genocide against its native people. Similar to the situation in Africa, a combination of native habits and foreign religions (in this case Catholicism) occurred, and the celebration of the lives of the ancestors did not cease. The problem is present in that the holiday was reduced to a single day (from what used to be a month) and adapted to November (originally happening in August). Even the largest indigenous celebrations were adapted into the ambitions and habits of the colonizers, who changed very little from their original beliefs. Between the 20th and the 21st centuries, it has become important in countries like the United States, in which people deliberately appropriate Mexican culture to put up a performative mask mostly related to their very own holiday, Halloween, which has Celtic origins. Hector Hernandez, a linguistics and culture expert at language learning platform Babbel, says that “the main difference for me is that Día de los Muertos is about celebrating the lives of those who have passed away. We don’t celebrate death.”
The date itself, November 2nd, is also seen as the Day of All Saints, making even clearer the Christian appropriation over a native habit, either to sound convidative to the indigenous communities, or to fuse both cultures into only one, slowly erasing the very origins of Latin America.
In Brazil, Catholicism has also fused with African-derived religions through time. Enslaved people brought their traditions from their native tribes, keeping such beliefs when being forced into living in what, initially, was a Portuguese colony. The most popular religions formed in Brazil are Candomblé and Umbanda, the latter being purely Brazilian.
Candomblé combines spiritual factors of multiple African groups, especially the Yorubá, Fon and Bantu, with orixás, deities and entities commonly associated with Catholic saints in an attempt to hide the practices from authorities. Candomblé reflects the reality of Indigenous groups that suffered with human trafficking, oppression and colonization both in their origin tribes and in their newly formed communities in a new region.
Umbanda is a combination of a huge variety of cultures, religions and spiritual beliefs. It combines Christianity, multiple Native Brazilian Indigenous religions and Candomblé itself. Candomblé practitioners see Umbanda as a pure consequence of racial exclusion: the union of all these beliefs into a religion is a mere proof of how marginalized groups were oppressed by colonizers and were brought together as one, while Christianity was imposed onto them. Much before that, in the 1600s, Jesuits took over an important part of Brazilian colonization: the conversion of Indigenous communities. The latter had two options: either to be enslaved by the bandeirantes, white men who scouted the land of the Portuguese colonies, or to be saved by their faith in Christ, receiving baptism, new names and habits.
Religions are influential in race-related conflicts because they manifest the cultural and spiritual matters of diverse communities. Colonization is never imposed by white people onto white people; thus, the religious intolerance into minor groups is nothing but a consequence of colonization.
Transcending Borders: Colonialism & Global Health
Also referred to as the “Age of Discovery,” modern colonialism began during the 15th Century when Portugal began to explore trade routes and civilizations outside of Europe. The historic phenomenon of colonialism stretches around the globe, with a vast majority of regions coming under European control. As stated in ‘Colonialism and Modern Constructions of Race: A Preliminary Inquiry,’ “Colonialism is [an] absolute government, founded, not on consent, but on conquest.” The aftermath of colonisation of people around the world led to resentment, which in turn manifested into conflict.
Several individuals argue that this conflict is a direct result of a lack of resources and disparities, while others believe that this conflict has been influenced by cultural and social differences, with prejudices and biases clouding judgement. When an individual examines the pattern of colonisation in history, it becomes clear that education and all aspects related to it were heavily affected by colonists.
By dividing and categorizing each individual according to their race and culture, a trend of compartmentalization emerged, and what kind of education that individual received heavily relied on their background. Although this idea has now been understood to be outdated and somewhat archaic, as people of all backgrounds are given opportunities to receive all forms of education without bias, there are still several repercussions of colonialism on education.
An idea termed “colonized curriculum” started to surface on several social media platforms after an in-depth analysis of the portrayal of colonized regions and their colonizers in the history curricula of said colonizers. One prime example is how Africa, African independence and European interference, particularly Dutch interference, has been depicted in the history books of Dutch primary schools. The curriculum paints Africa as an extremely impoverished, primitive and savage region while also denying the fact that Dutch colonizers played a colossal role in the underdevelopment of Africa.
Various colonizing regions, particularly in Europe and the Americas, deny several claims of race and racism in academics and also have enabled their young students to believe in stereotypes regarding people of cultures that are different from them. Not only does this allow them to have prejudiced and biased opinions about people from different backgrounds, but it also enables the creation of fear within the minds of students, resulting in resentment and conflict.
University of Toronto researcher Emmanuel Tabi discussed the idea of “decolonizing the curriculum” and explained how curriculums in several colonial regions lack diversity and do not allow children from colonised regions to identify with themselves and their culture, especially if it “denigrates your own culture.” Once again, this fuels feelings of pique and resentment, allowing the conflict to grow stronger and more violent.
This idea of “decolonizing the curriculum” became stronger when students at British universities protested in order to add more Black and ethnic minority (BAME) writers to their reading lists. This protest gained more attention when Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, stood in support of this campaign. One of the more surprising statistics was when it was revealed that in 2016-17, only twenty-five black women were recorded to be working as professors, compared to 14,000 white males. What enraged the public, even more, was the fact that despite Black women being outnumbered 560:1, it was the white professors who felt threatened, especially when a lecturer at University of Exeter, Doug Stokes claimed that the campaign to decolonize the curriculum was “ a big mistake,” since “the last thing our universities need is to have ‘male, pale and stale’ voices sidelined.”
These protests have only begun to uncover how colonialism has influenced our past and present and elaborate upon the concerns of racism, and they are only getting stronger through social media platforms. Regardless, this fight is one that will only get more arduous, and minorities are fighting even harder to avail equal opportunities in areas like education, keeping in mind how colonization affected their regions negatively.
Colonialism has had a serious impact on the health of indigenous people around the globe. When European explorers first arrived in the New World, they rapidly decimated the native population, largely due to the deadly diseases they carried like smallpox and tuberculosis. Missionaries and invading forces with underlying motives established the healthcare system, effectively destroying native healthcare practices. Colonizers in Africa and the Carribean frequently took advantage of native people, often using them for medical experimentation. Although these events are well-known and condemned today, the effect neocolonialism has on modern global health remains virtually unknown. Public health “experts” from former colonial powers often offer advice on how to improve the healthcare systems of former colonies with little knowledge of the culture or history of these nations. Nations like Canada and Australia, with significant populations of indigenous people, have healthcare systems designed for the benefit of white people with little input or representation of native people.
One major way in which neocolonialism impacts global healthcare is through consulting. Frequently, public health graduates from Western powers visit former colonies and offer recommendations to improve healthcare systems of former colonies. These “recommendations” are not based on any knowledge of the culture or traditions of the nation and have minimal input from local experts. While perhaps these individuals have better intentions, these actions are not very different from colonizers of the past who forced native people to conform to their healthcare practices with no regard for indigenous input and traditions. The idea that Western public health experts know what is best for former colonies is simply a manifestation of neocolonialism. Additionally, most major global health organizations and research facilities have headquarters in the West even if their focus is in the global South, like the World Health Organization and others. Medical journals that feature research about former colonies, like the Lancet, have primarily white writers, editors and publishers.
Neocolonialism also impacts the national health systems of various countries. For example, Australia, the home of a sizable aboriginal population, has a healthcare system designed around the needs of white people. Indigenous people are forced to conform to Western health standards with a lack of consideration for their traditional practices, often leading to worse healthcare outcomes. The legacy of colonialism is also visible in the Nunavut people of Canada. Systemic racism enforced by Canada’s healthcare system has caused a tuberculosis rate eleven times the national average. Unfortunately, Canada has only addressed this problem in recent years. Most doctors for indigenous people are not indigenous themselves, and generally, native people have little representation in healthcare.
There have been many measures suggested to address these issues, although in many cases, proper implementation has yet to occur. For example, many have attempted to expand global health institutions in developing nations, such as the Africa Health Research Institute in South Africa. There are also initiatives dedicated to expanding the presence of experts from the Global South in international health conversations, such as Emerging Voices in Global Health. Additionally, recommendations from western experts who have minimal experience with developing countries have begun to be discouraged, as has “voluntourism”, which also perpetuates neocolonialism and can worsen many local issues. Despite all of this, colonialism’s impact on global health today has only attracted recognition recently, and many years will pass before the world sees a significant improvement in healthcare for indigenous groups.
Colonialism, Religion, and Race-Related Conflict
As slavery became more economically important in the 15th century, human trafficking shaped the societal structure in Asia and the Americas. Africa was a key continent for exploitation, and European interference in the continent only grew throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Berlin Conference, organized by the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, arbitrarily divided Africa into distinct regions that European countries would quickly claim as their own. This division disregarded tribal allyship and put enemy tribes under the same rule. Religious and cultural conflicts were already part of these tribes’ cultures. Yet, they directly encountered an imposition of a new culture and had no way to defend themselves. Thus, as vulnerability grew, so did the cultural colonization of white people onto many African people.
With most authority developing its spiritual works by oral history, custom and practice, African religions and spiritual rituals produced no written works, which according to a eurocentric view, represented lack of proper religious observance and preparation for executing rituals. Over time, the exposure of native tribes to both Islam and Christianity were incorporated into traditional native rituals. These two major religions have grown more prominent in the 20th century, an almost irreversible process to the pluralistic nature of African religions. According to Jacob Olupona, professor of indigenous African religions at Harvard Divinity School and professor of African and African-American studies in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Science, “If we lose traditional African religions, we would also lose or continue to seriously undermine the African practice of rites of passage such as the much cherished age-grade initiations, which have for so long integrated and brought Africans together under a common understanding, or worldview.” He adds, “Foreign religions simply don’t have that same connection to the African continent.”
In Latin America, indigenous groups experienced similar religious ingratiation. As European colonizers conquered Mexico, for example, they scrutinized the Aztec festival, El Día de Los Muertos. Currently, both the misinterpretation and the demonization of the Día de los Muertos are outside the Latin American, especially the Mexican, perception. Festivities in Meso-America observing the past lives of ancestors have occurred for almost three thousand years. The largest festival, which took place in the entire ninth month of the Aztec calendar (August according to the Georgian calendar), developed into what is now known as the Mexican Day of the Dead. However, there have been many changes, most of them irreversible.
The Aztecs were the major Indigenous group in what is now known as Latin America when colonizers took over the land and committed genocide against its native people. Similar to the situation in Africa, a combination of native habits and foreign religions (in this case Catholicism) occurred, and the celebration of the lives of the ancestors did not cease. The problem is present in that the holiday was reduced to a single day (from what used to be a month) and adapted to November (originally happening in August). Even the largest indigenous celebrations were adapted into the ambitions and habits of the colonizers, who changed very little from their original beliefs. Between the 20th and the 21st centuries, it has become important in countries like the United States, in which people deliberately appropriate Mexican culture to put up a performative mask mostly related to their very own holiday, Halloween, which has Celtic origins. Hector Hernandez, a linguistics and culture expert at language learning platform Babbel, says that “the main difference for me is that Día de los Muertos is about celebrating the lives of those who have passed away. We don’t celebrate death.”
The date itself, November 2nd, is also seen as the Day of All Saints, making even clearer the Christian appropriation over a native habit, either to sound convidative to the indigenous communities, or to fuse both cultures into only one, slowly erasing the very origins of Latin America.
In Brazil, Catholicism has also fused with African-derived religions through time. Enslaved people brought their traditions from their native tribes, keeping such beliefs when being forced into living in what, initially, was a Portuguese colony. The most popular religions formed in Brazil are Candomblé and Umbanda, the latter being purely Brazilian.
Candomblé combines spiritual factors of multiple African groups, especially the Yorubá, Fon and Bantu, with orixás, deities and entities commonly associated with Catholic saints in an attempt to hide the practices from authorities. Candomblé reflects the reality of Indigenous groups that suffered with human trafficking, oppression and colonization both in their origin tribes and in their newly formed communities in a new region.
Umbanda is a combination of a huge variety of cultures, religions and spiritual beliefs. It combines Christianity, multiple Native Brazilian Indigenous religions and Candomblé itself. Candomblé practitioners see Umbanda as a pure consequence of racial exclusion: the union of all these beliefs into a religion is a mere proof of how marginalized groups were oppressed by colonizers and were brought together as one, while Christianity was imposed onto them. Much before that, in the 1600s, Jesuits took over an important part of Brazilian colonization: the conversion of Indigenous communities. The latter had two options: either to be enslaved by the bandeirantes, white men who scouted the land of the Portuguese colonies, or to be saved by their faith in Christ, receiving baptism, new names and habits.
Religions are influential in race-related conflicts because they manifest the cultural and spiritual matters of diverse communities. Colonization is never imposed by white people onto white people; thus, the religious intolerance into minor groups is nothing but a consequence of colonization.
Transcending Borders: Colonialism & Global Health
Also referred to as the “Age of Discovery,” modern colonialism began during the 15th Century when Portugal began to explore trade routes and civilizations outside of Europe. The historic phenomenon of colonialism stretches around the globe, with a vast majority of regions coming under European control. As stated in ‘Colonialism and Modern Constructions of Race: A Preliminary Inquiry,’ “Colonialism is [an] absolute government, founded, not on consent, but on conquest.” The aftermath of colonisation of people around the world led to resentment, which in turn manifested into conflict.
Several individuals argue that this conflict is a direct result of a lack of resources and disparities, while others believe that this conflict has been influenced by cultural and social differences, with prejudices and biases clouding judgement. When an individual examines the pattern of colonisation in history, it becomes clear that education and all aspects related to it were heavily affected by colonists.
By dividing and categorizing each individual according to their race and culture, a trend of compartmentalization emerged, and what kind of education that individual received heavily relied on their background. Although this idea has now been understood to be outdated and somewhat archaic, as people of all backgrounds are given opportunities to receive all forms of education without bias, there are still several repercussions of colonialism on education.
An idea termed “colonized curriculum” started to surface on several social media platforms after an in-depth analysis of the portrayal of colonized regions and their colonizers in the history curricula of said colonizers. One prime example is how Africa, African independence and European interference, particularly Dutch interference, has been depicted in the history books of Dutch primary schools. The curriculum paints Africa as an extremely impoverished, primitive and savage region while also denying the fact that Dutch colonizers played a colossal role in the underdevelopment of Africa.
Various colonizing regions, particularly in Europe and the Americas, deny several claims of race and racism in academics and also have enabled their young students to believe in stereotypes regarding people of cultures that are different from them. Not only does this allow them to have prejudiced and biased opinions about people from different backgrounds, but it also enables the creation of fear within the minds of students, resulting in resentment and conflict.
University of Toronto researcher Emmanuel Tabi discussed the idea of “decolonizing the curriculum” and explained how curriculums in several colonial regions lack diversity and do not allow children from colonised regions to identify with themselves and their culture, especially if it “denigrates your own culture.” Once again, this fuels feelings of pique and resentment, allowing the conflict to grow stronger and more violent.
This idea of “decolonizing the curriculum” became stronger when students at British universities protested in order to add more Black and ethnic minority (BAME) writers to their reading lists. This protest gained more attention when Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, stood in support of this campaign. One of the more surprising statistics was when it was revealed that in 2016-17, only twenty-five black women were recorded to be working as professors, compared to 14,000 white males. What enraged the public, even more, was the fact that despite Black women being outnumbered 560:1, it was the white professors who felt threatened, especially when a lecturer at University of Exeter, Doug Stokes claimed that the campaign to decolonize the curriculum was “ a big mistake,” since “the last thing our universities need is to have ‘male, pale and stale’ voices sidelined.”
These protests have only begun to uncover how colonialism has influenced our past and present and elaborate upon the concerns of racism, and they are only getting stronger through social media platforms. Regardless, this fight is one that will only get more arduous, and minorities are fighting even harder to avail equal opportunities in areas like education, keeping in mind how colonization affected their regions negatively.
magazine 2021
3.
Toxic Traces of Colonialism in Education, Religion & Global Health
Toxic Traces of Colonialism in Education, Religion & Global Health
By Raiaab Ajmal, Medha Nagasubramanian, and Oliver Polachini
Neocolonialism in Modern Global Health
Colonialism has had a serious impact on the health of indigenous people around the globe. When European explorers first arrived in the New World, they rapidly decimated the native population, largely due to the deadly diseases they carried like smallpox and tuberculosis. Missionaries and invading forces with underlying motives established the healthcare system, effectively destroying native healthcare practices. Colonizers in Africa and the Carribean frequently took advantage of native people, often using them for medical experimentation. Although these events are well-known and condemned today, the effect neocolonialism has on modern global health remains virtually unknown. Public health “experts” from former colonial powers often offer advice on how to improve the healthcare systems of former colonies with little knowledge of the culture or history of these nations. Nations like Canada and Australia, with significant populations of indigenous people, have healthcare systems designed for the benefit of white people with little input or representation of native people.
One major way in which neocolonialism impacts global healthcare is through consulting. Frequently, public health graduates from Western powers visit former colonies and offer recommendations to improve healthcare systems of former colonies. These “recommendations” are not based on any knowledge of the culture or traditions of the nation and have minimal input from local experts. While perhaps these individuals have better intentions, these actions are not very different from colonizers of the past who forced native people to conform to their healthcare practices with no regard for indigenous input and traditions. The idea that Western public health experts know what is best for former colonies is simply a manifestation of neocolonialism. Additionally, most major global health organizations and research facilities have headquarters in the West even if their focus is in the global South, like the World Health Organization and others. Medical journals that feature research about former colonies, like the Lancet, have primarily white writers, editors and publishers.
Neocolonialism also impacts the national health systems of various countries. For example, Australia, the home of a sizable aboriginal population, has a healthcare system designed around the needs of white people. Indigenous people are forced to conform to Western health standards with a lack of consideration for their traditional practices, often leading to worse healthcare outcomes. The legacy of colonialism is also visible in the Nunavut people of Canada. Systemic racism enforced by Canada’s healthcare system has caused a tuberculosis rate eleven times the national average. Unfortunately, Canada has only addressed this problem in recent years. Most doctors for indigenous people are not indigenous themselves, and generally, native people have little representation in healthcare.
There have been many measures suggested to address these issues, although in many cases, proper implementation has yet to occur. For example, many have attempted to expand global health institutions in developing nations, such as the Africa Health Research Institute in South Africa. There are also initiatives dedicated to expanding the presence of experts from the Global South in international health conversations, such as Emerging Voices in Global Health. Additionally, recommendations from western experts who have minimal experience with developing countries have begun to be discouraged, as has “voluntourism”, which also perpetuates neocolonialism and can worsen many local issues. Despite all of this, colonialism’s impact on global health today has only attracted recognition recently, and many years will pass before the world sees a significant improvement in healthcare for indigenous groups.
Colonialism, Religion, and Race-Related Conflict
As slavery became more economically important in the 15th century, human trafficking shaped the societal structure in Asia and the Americas. Africa was a key continent for exploitation, and European interference in the continent only grew throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Berlin Conference, organized by the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, arbitrarily divided Africa into distinct regions that European countries would quickly claim as their own. This division disregarded tribal allyship and put enemy tribes under the same rule. Religious and cultural conflicts were already part of these tribes’ cultures. Yet, they directly encountered an imposition of a new culture and had no way to defend themselves. Thus, as vulnerability grew, so did the cultural colonization of white people onto many African people.
With most authority developing its spiritual works by oral history, custom and practice, African religions and spiritual rituals produced no written works, which according to a eurocentric view, represented lack of proper religious observance and preparation for executing rituals. Over time, the exposure of native tribes to both Islam and Christianity were incorporated into traditional native rituals. These two major religions have grown more prominent in the 20th century, an almost irreversible process to the pluralistic nature of African religions. According to Jacob Olupona, professor of indigenous African religions at Harvard Divinity School and professor of African and African-American studies in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Science, “If we lose traditional African religions, we would also lose or continue to seriously undermine the African practice of rites of passage such as the much cherished age-grade initiations, which have for so long integrated and brought Africans together under a common understanding, or worldview.” He adds, “Foreign religions simply don’t have that same connection to the African continent.”
In Latin America, indigenous groups experienced similar religious ingratiation. As European colonizers conquered Mexico, for example, they scrutinized the Aztec festival, El Día de Los Muertos. Currently, both the misinterpretation and the demonization of the Día de los Muertos are outside the Latin American, especially the Mexican, perception. Festivities in Meso-America observing the past lives of ancestors have occurred for almost three thousand years. The largest festival, which took place in the entire ninth month of the Aztec calendar (August according to the Georgian calendar), developed into what is now known as the Mexican Day of the Dead. However, there have been many changes, most of them irreversible.
The Aztecs were the major Indigenous group in what is now known as Latin America when colonizers took over the land and committed genocide against its native people. Similar to the situation in Africa, a combination of native habits and foreign religions (in this case Catholicism) occurred, and the celebration of the lives of the ancestors did not cease. The problem is present in that the holiday was reduced to a single day (from what used to be a month) and adapted to November (originally happening in August). Even the largest indigenous celebrations were adapted into the ambitions and habits of the colonizers, who changed very little from their original beliefs. Between the 20th and the 21st centuries, it has become important in countries like the United States, in which people deliberately appropriate Mexican culture to put up a performative mask mostly related to their very own holiday, Halloween, which has Celtic origins. Hector Hernandez, a linguistics and culture expert at language learning platform Babbel, says that “the main difference for me is that Día de los Muertos is about celebrating the lives of those who have passed away. We don’t celebrate death.”
The date itself, November 2nd, is also seen as the Day of All Saints, making even clearer the Christian appropriation over a native habit, either to sound convidative to the indigenous communities, or to fuse both cultures into only one, slowly erasing the very origins of Latin America.
In Brazil, Catholicism has also fused with African-derived religions through time. Enslaved people brought their traditions from their native tribes, keeping such beliefs when being forced into living in what, initially, was a Portuguese colony. The most popular religions formed in Brazil are Candomblé and Umbanda, the latter being purely Brazilian.
Candomblé combines spiritual factors of multiple African groups, especially the Yorubá, Fon and Bantu, with orixás, deities and entities commonly associated with Catholic saints in an attempt to hide the practices from authorities. Candomblé reflects the reality of Indigenous groups that suffered with human trafficking, oppression and colonization both in their origin tribes and in their newly formed communities in a new region.
Umbanda is a combination of a huge variety of cultures, religions and spiritual beliefs. It combines Christianity, multiple Native Brazilian Indigenous religions and Candomblé itself. Candomblé practitioners see Umbanda as a pure consequence of racial exclusion: the union of all these beliefs into a religion is a mere proof of how marginalized groups were oppressed by colonizers and were brought together as one, while Christianity was imposed onto them. Much before that, in the 1600s, Jesuits took over an important part of Brazilian colonization: the conversion of Indigenous communities. The latter had two options: either to be enslaved by the bandeirantes, white men who scouted the land of the Portuguese colonies, or to be saved by their faith in Christ, receiving baptism, new names and habits.
Religions are influential in race-related conflicts because they manifest the cultural and spiritual matters of diverse communities. Colonization is never imposed by white people onto white people; thus, the religious intolerance into minor groups is nothing but a consequence of colonization.
Transcending Borders: Colonialism & Global Health
Also referred to as the “Age of Discovery,” modern colonialism began during the 15th Century when Portugal began to explore trade routes and civilizations outside of Europe. The historic phenomenon of colonialism stretches around the globe, with a vast majority of regions coming under European control. As stated in ‘Colonialism and Modern Constructions of Race: A Preliminary Inquiry,’ “Colonialism is [an] absolute government, founded, not on consent, but on conquest.” The aftermath of colonisation of people around the world led to resentment, which in turn manifested into conflict.
Several individuals argue that this conflict is a direct result of a lack of resources and disparities, while others believe that this conflict has been influenced by cultural and social differences, with prejudices and biases clouding judgement. When an individual examines the pattern of colonisation in history, it becomes clear that education and all aspects related to it were heavily affected by colonists.
By dividing and categorizing each individual according to their race and culture, a trend of compartmentalization emerged, and what kind of education that individual received heavily relied on their background. Although this idea has now been understood to be outdated and somewhat archaic, as people of all backgrounds are given opportunities to receive all forms of education without bias, there are still several repercussions of colonialism on education.
An idea termed “colonized curriculum” started to surface on several social media platforms after an in-depth analysis of the portrayal of colonized regions and their colonizers in the history curricula of said colonizers. One prime example is how Africa, African independence and European interference, particularly Dutch interference, has been depicted in the history books of Dutch primary schools. The curriculum paints Africa as an extremely impoverished, primitive and savage region while also denying the fact that Dutch colonizers played a colossal role in the underdevelopment of Africa.
Various colonizing regions, particularly in Europe and the Americas, deny several claims of race and racism in academics and also have enabled their young students to believe in stereotypes regarding people of cultures that are different from them. Not only does this allow them to have prejudiced and biased opinions about people from different backgrounds, but it also enables the creation of fear within the minds of students, resulting in resentment and conflict.
University of Toronto researcher Emmanuel Tabi discussed the idea of “decolonizing the curriculum” and explained how curriculums in several colonial regions lack diversity and do not allow children from colonised regions to identify with themselves and their culture, especially if it “denigrates your own culture.” Once again, this fuels feelings of pique and resentment, allowing the conflict to grow stronger and more violent.
This idea of “decolonizing the curriculum” became stronger when students at British universities protested in order to add more Black and ethnic minority (BAME) writers to their reading lists. This protest gained more attention when Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, stood in support of this campaign. One of the more surprising statistics was when it was revealed that in 2016-17, only twenty-five black women were recorded to be working as professors, compared to 14,000 white males. What enraged the public, even more, was the fact that despite Black women being outnumbered 560:1, it was the white professors who felt threatened, especially when a lecturer at University of Exeter, Doug Stokes claimed that the campaign to decolonize the curriculum was “ a big mistake,” since “the last thing our universities need is to have ‘male, pale and stale’ voices sidelined.”
These protests have only begun to uncover how colonialism has influenced our past and present and elaborate upon the concerns of racism, and they are only getting stronger through social media platforms. Regardless, this fight is one that will only get more arduous, and minorities are fighting even harder to avail equal opportunities in areas like education, keeping in mind how colonization affected their regions negatively.
Colonialism has had a serious impact on the health of indigenous people around the globe. When European explorers first arrived in the New World, they rapidly decimated the native population, largely due to the deadly diseases they carried like smallpox and tuberculosis. Missionaries and invading forces with underlying motives established the healthcare system, effectively destroying native healthcare practices. Colonizers in Africa and the Carribean frequently took advantage of native people, often using them for medical experimentation. Although these events are well-known and condemned today, the effect neocolonialism has on modern global health remains virtually unknown. Public health “experts” from former colonial powers often offer advice on how to improve the healthcare systems of former colonies with little knowledge of the culture or history of these nations. Nations like Canada and Australia, with significant populations of indigenous people, have healthcare systems designed for the benefit of white people with little input or representation of native people.
One major way in which neocolonialism impacts global healthcare is through consulting. Frequently, public health graduates from Western powers visit former colonies and offer recommendations to improve healthcare systems of former colonies. These “recommendations” are not based on any knowledge of the culture or traditions of the nation and have minimal input from local experts. While perhaps these individuals have better intentions, these actions are not very different from colonizers of the past who forced native people to conform to their healthcare practices with no regard for indigenous input and traditions. The idea that Western public health experts know what is best for former colonies is simply a manifestation of neocolonialism. Additionally, most major global health organizations and research facilities have headquarters in the West even if their focus is in the global South, like the World Health Organization and others. Medical journals that feature research about former colonies, like the Lancet, have primarily white writers, editors and publishers.
Neocolonialism also impacts the national health systems of various countries. For example, Australia, the home of a sizable aboriginal population, has a healthcare system designed around the needs of white people. Indigenous people are forced to conform to Western health standards with a lack of consideration for their traditional practices, often leading to worse healthcare outcomes. The legacy of colonialism is also visible in the Nunavut people of Canada. Systemic racism enforced by Canada’s healthcare system has caused a tuberculosis rate eleven times the national average. Unfortunately, Canada has only addressed this problem in recent years. Most doctors for indigenous people are not indigenous themselves, and generally, native people have little representation in healthcare.
There have been many measures suggested to address these issues, although in many cases, proper implementation has yet to occur. For example, many have attempted to expand global health institutions in developing nations, such as the Africa Health Research Institute in South Africa. There are also initiatives dedicated to expanding the presence of experts from the Global South in international health conversations, such as Emerging Voices in Global Health. Additionally, recommendations from western experts who have minimal experience with developing countries have begun to be discouraged, as has “voluntourism”, which also perpetuates neocolonialism and can worsen many local issues. Despite all of this, colonialism’s impact on global health today has only attracted recognition recently, and many years will pass before the world sees a significant improvement in healthcare for indigenous groups.
Colonialism, Religion, and Race-Related Conflict
As slavery became more economically important in the 15th century, human trafficking shaped the societal structure in Asia and the Americas. Africa was a key continent for exploitation, and European interference in the continent only grew throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Berlin Conference, organized by the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, arbitrarily divided Africa into distinct regions that European countries would quickly claim as their own. This division disregarded tribal allyship and put enemy tribes under the same rule. Religious and cultural conflicts were already part of these tribes’ cultures. Yet, they directly encountered an imposition of a new culture and had no way to defend themselves. Thus, as vulnerability grew, so did the cultural colonization of white people onto many African people.
With most authority developing its spiritual works by oral history, custom and practice, African religions and spiritual rituals produced no written works, which according to a eurocentric view, represented lack of proper religious observance and preparation for executing rituals. Over time, the exposure of native tribes to both Islam and Christianity were incorporated into traditional native rituals. These two major religions have grown more prominent in the 20th century, an almost irreversible process to the pluralistic nature of African religions. According to Jacob Olupona, professor of indigenous African religions at Harvard Divinity School and professor of African and African-American studies in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Science, “If we lose traditional African religions, we would also lose or continue to seriously undermine the African practice of rites of passage such as the much cherished age-grade initiations, which have for so long integrated and brought Africans together under a common understanding, or worldview.” He adds, “Foreign religions simply don’t have that same connection to the African continent.”
In Latin America, indigenous groups experienced similar religious ingratiation. As European colonizers conquered Mexico, for example, they scrutinized the Aztec festival, El Día de Los Muertos. Currently, both the misinterpretation and the demonization of the Día de los Muertos are outside the Latin American, especially the Mexican, perception. Festivities in Meso-America observing the past lives of ancestors have occurred for almost three thousand years. The largest festival, which took place in the entire ninth month of the Aztec calendar (August according to the Georgian calendar), developed into what is now known as the Mexican Day of the Dead. However, there have been many changes, most of them irreversible.
The Aztecs were the major Indigenous group in what is now known as Latin America when colonizers took over the land and committed genocide against its native people. Similar to the situation in Africa, a combination of native habits and foreign religions (in this case Catholicism) occurred, and the celebration of the lives of the ancestors did not cease. The problem is present in that the holiday was reduced to a single day (from what used to be a month) and adapted to November (originally happening in August). Even the largest indigenous celebrations were adapted into the ambitions and habits of the colonizers, who changed very little from their original beliefs. Between the 20th and the 21st centuries, it has become important in countries like the United States, in which people deliberately appropriate Mexican culture to put up a performative mask mostly related to their very own holiday, Halloween, which has Celtic origins. Hector Hernandez, a linguistics and culture expert at language learning platform Babbel, says that “the main difference for me is that Día de los Muertos is about celebrating the lives of those who have passed away. We don’t celebrate death.”
The date itself, November 2nd, is also seen as the Day of All Saints, making even clearer the Christian appropriation over a native habit, either to sound convidative to the indigenous communities, or to fuse both cultures into only one, slowly erasing the very origins of Latin America.
In Brazil, Catholicism has also fused with African-derived religions through time. Enslaved people brought their traditions from their native tribes, keeping such beliefs when being forced into living in what, initially, was a Portuguese colony. The most popular religions formed in Brazil are Candomblé and Umbanda, the latter being purely Brazilian.
Candomblé combines spiritual factors of multiple African groups, especially the Yorubá, Fon and Bantu, with orixás, deities and entities commonly associated with Catholic saints in an attempt to hide the practices from authorities. Candomblé reflects the reality of Indigenous groups that suffered with human trafficking, oppression and colonization both in their origin tribes and in their newly formed communities in a new region.
Umbanda is a combination of a huge variety of cultures, religions and spiritual beliefs. It combines Christianity, multiple Native Brazilian Indigenous religions and Candomblé itself. Candomblé practitioners see Umbanda as a pure consequence of racial exclusion: the union of all these beliefs into a religion is a mere proof of how marginalized groups were oppressed by colonizers and were brought together as one, while Christianity was imposed onto them. Much before that, in the 1600s, Jesuits took over an important part of Brazilian colonization: the conversion of Indigenous communities. The latter had two options: either to be enslaved by the bandeirantes, white men who scouted the land of the Portuguese colonies, or to be saved by their faith in Christ, receiving baptism, new names and habits.
Religions are influential in race-related conflicts because they manifest the cultural and spiritual matters of diverse communities. Colonization is never imposed by white people onto white people; thus, the religious intolerance into minor groups is nothing but a consequence of colonization.
Transcending Borders: Colonialism & Global Health
Also referred to as the “Age of Discovery,” modern colonialism began during the 15th Century when Portugal began to explore trade routes and civilizations outside of Europe. The historic phenomenon of colonialism stretches around the globe, with a vast majority of regions coming under European control. As stated in ‘Colonialism and Modern Constructions of Race: A Preliminary Inquiry,’ “Colonialism is [an] absolute government, founded, not on consent, but on conquest.” The aftermath of colonisation of people around the world led to resentment, which in turn manifested into conflict.
Several individuals argue that this conflict is a direct result of a lack of resources and disparities, while others believe that this conflict has been influenced by cultural and social differences, with prejudices and biases clouding judgement. When an individual examines the pattern of colonisation in history, it becomes clear that education and all aspects related to it were heavily affected by colonists.
By dividing and categorizing each individual according to their race and culture, a trend of compartmentalization emerged, and what kind of education that individual received heavily relied on their background. Although this idea has now been understood to be outdated and somewhat archaic, as people of all backgrounds are given opportunities to receive all forms of education without bias, there are still several repercussions of colonialism on education.
An idea termed “colonized curriculum” started to surface on several social media platforms after an in-depth analysis of the portrayal of colonized regions and their colonizers in the history curricula of said colonizers. One prime example is how Africa, African independence and European interference, particularly Dutch interference, has been depicted in the history books of Dutch primary schools. The curriculum paints Africa as an extremely impoverished, primitive and savage region while also denying the fact that Dutch colonizers played a colossal role in the underdevelopment of Africa.
Various colonizing regions, particularly in Europe and the Americas, deny several claims of race and racism in academics and also have enabled their young students to believe in stereotypes regarding people of cultures that are different from them. Not only does this allow them to have prejudiced and biased opinions about people from different backgrounds, but it also enables the creation of fear within the minds of students, resulting in resentment and conflict.
University of Toronto researcher Emmanuel Tabi discussed the idea of “decolonizing the curriculum” and explained how curriculums in several colonial regions lack diversity and do not allow children from colonised regions to identify with themselves and their culture, especially if it “denigrates your own culture.” Once again, this fuels feelings of pique and resentment, allowing the conflict to grow stronger and more violent.
This idea of “decolonizing the curriculum” became stronger when students at British universities protested in order to add more Black and ethnic minority (BAME) writers to their reading lists. This protest gained more attention when Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, stood in support of this campaign. One of the more surprising statistics was when it was revealed that in 2016-17, only twenty-five black women were recorded to be working as professors, compared to 14,000 white males. What enraged the public, even more, was the fact that despite Black women being outnumbered 560:1, it was the white professors who felt threatened, especially when a lecturer at University of Exeter, Doug Stokes claimed that the campaign to decolonize the curriculum was “ a big mistake,” since “the last thing our universities need is to have ‘male, pale and stale’ voices sidelined.”
These protests have only begun to uncover how colonialism has influenced our past and present and elaborate upon the concerns of racism, and they are only getting stronger through social media platforms. Regardless, this fight is one that will only get more arduous, and minorities are fighting even harder to avail equal opportunities in areas like education, keeping in mind how colonization affected their regions negatively.
