Comparison Essay Example on Decolonization Strategies and Re-indigenization

Towards the study for comparison of the two main objectives, namely decolonization strategies and re-indigenization, while researching on their similarities and contradictions with the cradle practices in the countryside, I have come across many journals, articles, reviews and brochures and their scope is vast. These authors have published works that is limited to singular topics without any comparisons and centrally aiming at exhausting a particular event However, when all the authors discuss in details their choice of interest in their journals, articles, reviews and brochures, I fail to see them go deeper into clarification of the similarities and differences of their topics.

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My goal in this paper is to show how the strategies used for decolonization and re-indigenization compared to actual indigenous lifeways and practices in the countryside. To achieve this goal, I have organized my paper into sub sections under main sections. In the first section, I provide an account of two superior events in history of decolonization and re-indigenization and the effects they had. In the same section, I go into details of the actual indigenous life ways and practices in the countryside.

My paper ends in a third section that offers the out linings of the major similarities and differences of the two events concluding with a fourth section that highlights the importance of further research into this particular agenda. It is at this point I include an appendix after the works cited. Before I can begin the examination of the three handbooks, however, I need to provide an historical context in which the books were written, and it is to this that I want to venture.

Historical context

Preserving the Cree language has been praised as de-colonizing and re-Indigenizing perceptions of Language within Cree culture. (Wild Berries/Pakwa), similarly, in historical times of the great Colonial Times, these are in the context of referring to a way of rejuvenating the spirit of getting freedom back into the minds of the colonized and re-introducing the ancient ways in culture, governments, social Aspects and beliefs of a people before the events of colonialism. In the Countryside, where culture and such ways characterizing originality of a people are still held closely, diversification takes place. There are conservancies in some countryside, for a particular group of people that. Date back to the earliest of times in history, it is from these concepts that the authors have generated their materials. In both events, lives were affected enormously and huge changes were experienced both socially and economically. According to the papers, journals, books and other related documents, I would want to take a stand that re-colonization and re-indigenization are somehow similar to the lifeways of the countryside that were passed on and are still passed on over and over from one generation to the other. My argument is followed by justifications in comparing the similarities in the strategies that are followed in the three events. Historical events support that according to the Authors I refer to. Their works vary in themes and concepts, but merging them for ideas has gotten me to come to this conclusion and I will take you through their experiences and share their thoughts and mine on how I came to the conclusion.

Adaptations and concepts of re-Indigenizing in history.

Re-indigenizing for ancient people took many forms. They were guided by any symbols of their past, known or unknown. According to legend, Cumbe ruled the Colombian community of Cumbal during the Spanish Invasion. Although there is no documentation of Chief Cumbe's existence, today's Cumbales point to him as their ancestral link to Pasto ancestors. (Joanne Rappaport). He is used symbolically by a people who need something to believe in. According to the legend he had ruled during the invasion by the Spanish. In current day, the Pasto people use him as their true link to the Pasto ancestry. Apart from being used in different setups from military politics to community organizations and music, they use him to try and reinvigorate their indigenous heritage and also reclaim the lands the heritage justifies. Historical consciousness is based on a unique combination of ethnographical analysis (Cumbe reborn) helps in understanding the ethnic militancy of Americas and on the wider methodological discussion of non-western historical consciousness under colonial domination. It is an insight of events unfolding as people try to recapture their originality in the effort of decolonization.

In his book, Canessa explains how the people in the small village he studies are identified by their will for re-indigenization. I feel that this is used by the different parties involved to intimidate and go against their opposites. This I highlight as an effect of re-indigenization. It is politicized by the people of this village, in a socio-political manner, and they go further to make it raced, classed and gendered.

He takes us through the semantics, phenomenologies and politics of re-indigenization with only very few simple proofs. In contemporary Bolivia Canessa takes us through with him to search for vivid explanations of who really is practicing re-indigenization and re-colonization. As much as I follow him through the search, I realize he is almost there when he touches the Main elements (food, language, dress, religious practices, and notions of historical Injustice) but with the diversions that rapidly come in, he loses track of these and move to other aspects.

He goes on along the line of analytics to look into the surroundings of Wila Kjarka and the extensive fields of religion, history and culture in terms of ritual practices, and this is the part we get to see a revelation, but in a way of a small insight on how the actual indigenous life ways and practices in the countryside matter in influencing de-colonization and re-indigenization. It is clear that a marked out region, theoretically speaking will largely be affected by the surroundings which are typically the countryside practices. Considering the ways of countryside life, I look into the traditional French Canadian family. French Canada began in 1584, establishing a colony which was New France. It has a rich culture and marked by slow growth over a century after startup. Build along River St, Lawrence; it consisted of many rural farms along it. Working in the nearby woodlands was also essential an activity. Voyagers too came up during summers as they went on to do business in Montreal. Settlements began downriver with the settlers working their way into the bush to clear more living and farming space.

Marriage being more of a family matter rather than a spouse choosing thing, this was a major marking of a rite of passage. Courtships in such scenarios lasted a few months often in the context of the parties or other activities allowing social interactions. The family is considered as the backbone of the society and therefore, individuals in a society will always do their best to ensure that each and every child receives the best healthcare and parenting. Marriage as a union is taken very seriously. Individuals may intermarry depending on their cultural determiners.

This being a snippet of the lifeways of a people, it reflects originality before precolonial times, and these are the strategies that were later used for decolonization in the re-indigenization period.

Failure to recognize the dynamic quality of shared beliefs from the past limits the Revolutionary Potential of working class movements. The vitality of folk beliefs stems from the Sense of Identity, of common aims and interests amongst those who share them. Their Dynamism flows from the ability people have to recombine the same themes to prove different Postulates about Society. I shall illustrate this with the changing significance of the Devil, or Tio (Uncle) as he is called, in Bolivian tin mines [June Nash (summer, 1972), pp. 221] she lets us understand the extreme nature of how intense the lifeways in the countryside are and their significance too. This is achieved as we are made to understand the happenings at the mines during the introduction of machines that replaced 800 women workers (1967-San Juan Massacre).

Due to the belief in lifeways of their countryside, we see a woman killed in the 1942 Massacre, fighting for what they believe to rightfully own: mines. They continuously put up fight after fight in resistance to governments and any changes that they believe affected their life ways. In another case, still in Bolivia, we see the Andean writer (Waman Puma) talk about the Burial Rituals that were practiced then and looking at present day Highland Bolivia, which formed the South Eastern quarter of the fourfold Inka Estate. He says ..The dead go directly to Puquinapampa and Corapona. There they meet together and it is said that there they enjoy much Feasting and Conversation between the dead men and the dead women; and that when they leave there they go to another place where they endure much work, hunger, thirst and cold, and when It is hot the heat is too great; and thus they bury them with their food and drink. And they always take Care to send them provisions to eat and drink; and after six months they make another similar Feast for the dead, and after a year another; but they do not take out the said deceased in a Procession as they do in Chinchaysuyu, they leave him inside his cave and underground chamber and they call the town of the dead amayan marcapa (town of the ghosts).¶

(Waman Puma, 1613 (1936:294)¶

Conclusion

Looking at such a setup, of continuously repetitive activities, we could come into agreement that re-colonization and re-indigenization are somehow similar to the life ways of the countryside that were passed on and are still passed on over and over from one generation to the other. However, I would like to take you a back to questions that would come up in this context in the future, and open further discussion into this topic, using various sources for justification, and which I will now turn on to.

Considering the way life ways have lost some of their key aspects along their lifecycle as they are passed down generations, I think it would be reasonable to say that they are not similar to re-colonization and re-indigenization, since in the latter the original ways are really referred to and insisted on.

In re-colonization and re-indigenization, legends are used for reference while it is not a necessity in countryside life ways, since the moving out generation is copied.

Works Cited

ANDERS BURMAN (2014). Journal of Latin American Studies, 46, pp 198-199 Doi 10.1017/S0022216X13001673¶

Andrew Canessa, Intimate Indigeneities: Race, Sex and History in the Small Spaces Of Andean Life (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press)

Harris, O. 1982. The Dead and the Devils among the Bolivian Laymi in (eds.) M. Bloch

J. Parry Death and the Regeneration of Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Nash, J. 1972.

The Devil in Bolivias Nationalized Tin Mines. Science and Society 36/2: 221-233 Gose, P. 1986. Sacrifice and the Commodity Form in the Andes, Man 21/2: 296-310

By Olivia Harris (WEB) Death and regeneration of life. (Waman Puma, 1613)