Decolonize? My Sweet Arse.

 Oh my sweet arse is so tired of decolonizing white stuff. Decolonizing is hard stuff, just like cleaning mustard off of your white dress shirt. It has to be done right away or it won't come off. It is not part of the fabric, but it just becomes imbedded there for all to see. Lot of folks get it wrong when they think about decolonizing. They automatically focus on todays' gems in society: the car, the Batman Leggo, the pink polka-dotted bottoms with leopard tops, tailor-made cigarettes and of course the cellular device. Personally I don't know how I have managed all these years without an Ipod. Good god wearing Crocs, I would literally go on a fad diet if I didn't have access to tunes (even ABBA). So people (mostly Settlers aka W-T's, and white folk in general) go for the "you should go back live in Teepees then." It's an easy lazy attack about the whole decolonize movement. People will try steer the narrative away from the true story. The story of unending greed, the depravity of acquisition, and the horrors of hierarchy. 

"How can we dance when our Earth is burning?" "Easy, I wear headphones and just look at my feet." This my friends, the question and answer is our society. No, it is true. Our society is asking what the fuck and our society is answering with "no speak English." If you really truly think about it, the 'Decolonize the shit out of our lives' is our salvation. And no you're not going to find the answers with business, capitalism, democracy, socialism, political monopolies, and all those other unitary states. Those Decolonize weirdoes have it right, it is the foundation of modern society which is killing us, all of us, even those wealthy dudes waving their dicks in space flights. We live on the same planet. 

I listening to a Massey Lecture on CBC radio a number of years ago. It was Adrian Clarkson of all people. She spoke on The Paradox of Citizenship - Ubuntu. Clarkson: "a person is a person because of other persons." Clarkson does a great job at body slamming colonial scholars who make fun of Ubuntu.  There is a fierce defense of society as it stands.  The foundation of society is of course based on accumulating goods. Clarkson borrows on the Indigenous Way of Life and shines a spotlight on the absurdity of European way of life. Clarkson is sharing about decolonization without labeling it as decolonizing. As a younger person (and still much) I was a shit-head. I wanted to be more than a shit-head so I tried becoming aware of my shittyness. I even bought the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I didn't finish the book. One book I did read was The Tao of Pooh. Clarkson's stories in her lecture took me back to my own colonial coat which is part of my being. There books I read were part of the tool kit I was amassing over my lifetime. 

You see we are born into a colonial minded society. The colonial mind we have is all about getting stuff, judging others and our appetite for more. Decolonizing is about that. Essentially we have to start being generous in our being. Living a life for all of us and not just some of us. We see it all the time in our daily routines: Blood first, Be a man, Work for success, Family comes first. On the surface the messages seem to be righteous, good even. Each message is based on a colonial footing. Decolonizing our minds is difficult. The colonial messages are everyday, every second and everywhere. With our own people we see the white person, actually the white male as the superior being. The message has been imbedded deep into our being: white Jesus, white cowboy John Wayne, white Elvis Presley, white Winston Churchill, white Popes, white Doctors, white everything. The message is there and it's hard to recognize. I have seen some really staunch proud Indigenous folk yield their voice to white men and white women. We have some strong voices in our Native community but they are muted when compared to Karen's and Chester's of the world. So being mindful is not the same as letting people get away with colonial acts of privilege, judgement and bullying. Decolonization also means amplifying your own voice when others are trying to mute it. Inserted video below is decolonization in action. It is of course the Women who stand strong with their voices. The were strong without being mean. Their voices were strong in the situation. The Women stood their ground and it was beautiful. 

"My sweet lord, oh my lord, my sweet lord, I really want to see you," is a line from the George Harrison's song and although the meaning behind the song is a decolonizing of religion, the irony is the image which comes to mind in society (Western and Europe) is a white male when we hear my sweet lord.  A beautiful song by the way, may it bring some good feelings your way. The other weird thing about the society is there always a white woman being named as the most beautiful woman in the world. That is very surprising since Asia, India, Africa make up 75% of the world's population. You would think the odds are in favor of the most beautiful found in that percentage area?  Then again, we are fed a whole bowl of whiteness when it comes to what is beauty. If we are wanting to decolonize we should start with being mindful of others and try not being an arsehole. Even a sweet arsehole is still an arsehole. Like the Women in the video, they were strong, confident and didn't need to be sweet arseholes. These Indigenous Women, they were elegant in their position, they were passionate and they were true. So we need not bend over and anal bleach our sweet bums when we are soaping up for a good decolonizing. We can be mindful and still be a force against the machine of colonial stamps. 

I have this acquaintance, he is originally from Vietnam. He was telling me about how Indigenous Women are viewed. He said they (Indian Women) are easy, and are willing to do anything. I was angry when he said this. He wasn't trying to be mean just sharing what he was thought. It is quite weird for me, because I once got an email video from a Iranian colleague. It was a video of these two Asian girls and one was using a funnel to pour small fish into the canal of the other woman. After awhile the woman shot the fish out of her orifice. So we are prone to getting different messages. The movie industry sends mixed messages when it comes to Asian Women; the mild meek subservient, and the abnoxious bossy woman. We see things from a skewed point of view.  The movie Jerry Maguire, when Dorothy Boyd says about Avery Bishop, "she must be real classy" and the scene has Avery hammering Maguire with her blonde naked body and she is yelling "don't ever stop fucking me." is a metaphor for how things are not what we believe. We have been led to believe many things, white is right, white is pure, white is justice, white is everything. Only thing is, we are not enjoying this movie and we are not going to sit through it. For movies to sit through go with Exterminate All the Brutes. The view from here only gets clearer. I don't think you need to be bleaching your sweet arseholes any longer.