Decolonization is a Constant War
A college reflection
Decolonization is a constant war because colonization itself is a living force that leaves the sacred with perpetual reckoning. Colonization is cunning, deceptive, and violent from its inception as it continues to mutate to deteriorate land, mind, body, and spirit.
Decolonization is undoing and ending all forms of colonial systems internally and externally as a way of life. For generations, efforts such as language revitalization, cultural ceremonial practices, reclaiming land, and defying the colonial status quo have been important (de)colonial acts, but how the spirit of decolonization persists must transgress liberal and respectable forms of refusal. What does this look like through a bird's eye view and on the ground in our neighborhoods or surrounding communities? What would our relationship to the land with its original caretakers be? How would we incorporate the preservation of all our co-existing and neighboring ecologies? Does this stand a chance in the so-called United States of Amerikkkahhh?
Disengaging from systems that we’re contingent on for survival is inescapable from capitalism. This never-ending hamster wheel routine of work to meet the state’s regulations to survive causes perpetual fatigue and dissociation from whatever “reality” means, materializing through chronic stress, autoimmune issues or premature death. Anti-discrimination policies and superficial forms of recognition only provide surface level support or the pharmaceutical industry profiting off pain, never getting to the root of how we as a people are coerced to participate in a system that was made to proactively destroy us and the land. Through this exacerbation of time, work, and lack of accountable care, there is a profound longing for connection with the natural world around us without the need of financializing necessities. Are we really our ancestors’ wildest dreams? If so, what did those dreams consist of, and are we fulfilling their prophecy? Are we creating alternative non-settler futures?
The rise and speed of advancing technology is depleting our natural resources, causing the extinction of certain ecologies, further separating us from living and surviving as a human race with the natural world. The influx of data centers to sustain Artificial Intelligence's popular tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E requires temperature-controlled buildings to house and run their infrastructure. For a clearer visual, a data center’s water usage for Google alone in 2023 amounted to that of 9,240 Olympic stadium pools (The Sustainable Agency, 2024). The Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimates that by 2026, electricity consumption of these data centers is expected to reach 1,050 terawatts, equal to the top 5% data centers globally. AI has become a tool to isolate us from our own creative imagination and critical thinking capacities. Filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki states how AI is an “insult to life itself”, but it is also a threat to existence.
While some choose to turn away and go on with business as usual, whether as a pacifist or nihilist, on the ground coalition building across communities has demonstrated how militant defense in action and education is the only way to keep us safe. From the sharing of mass kidnappings on the street via social media, zines discussing frontline tactics and surveillance, supporting impacted individuals and families directly have been accountable forms of survival under low-mid intensity warfare. Before the mass ICE kidnappings occurred in early June 2025 in (but not limited to) Los Angeles, signs of heightened warfare against a revolting dignified militia pointed to the fear of BIPOC insurgencies forming. The creation of Cop City, a $90 million police training facility in the Weelaunee Forest (so called Atlanta) is an example of how the state grew concerned of community revolt and expanded its forces after the police murder of George Floyd in 2020. In early 2023, police also killed a forest defender, Tortuguita, and RICO charged over 40 people for defending the Weelaunee forest, or as the state would describe as, “domestic terrorism”.
Acts of settler colonial desecration, like the burning of a police precinct, damaging capital, igniting Waymo cars, and fighting back physically against the armed U.S. and Zionist forces, illustrate the capacity and responsibility to evoke revolt as an ancestral necessity for survival. May we not forget the insurgent ways of those who came before us, (like, but not limited to) Harriet Tubman and those who co-conspired with her on the Combahee River raid (1863), where nearly 1,000 enslaved people were freed and a plantation was burned down. May the spirit of Toypurina, a Kizh Tongva woman from the Jachivit village, live on and ignite rebellions in the protection of our communities. Amerikkka hasn’t stopped being anti-Black, anti-indigenous, patriarchal, or homophobic, and it never will until all prisons, detention centers are abolished, and previously enslaved families and those who have experienced extreme state repression and violation receive their reparations for psychological and physical harm.
No more passivity, sin miedo, sin piedad, let us fuck it all up and light the flames to abolish the systems that continue to pull on our spirit and kill any chance of life and future. Hiding behind politicians, applying for social justice grants, and writing the latest book is not going to save us, nor should it.
What are we left to do if this moment of rupture is not enough for us to mobilize an armed resistance with mutual aid offerings, political education and action as defense for the most vulnerable? May the vision and practice of a resistance with no authoritarian rule, but one that allows the land to be our framework for survival continue to lead the way. Colonial ideology ruminates deep in our psyche, but the echoes of insurgent legacies reverberate through us, provoking possibility. Do you hear them? What do they ask of you?
Decolonization is a constant War in Action is an analog collage piece that was channeled during one of my collage sessions, one late evening. Lately, collaging has offered the (physical and mental) space to cut and paste my eclectic wonders and real-time emotions under perpetual political distress.
Flipping through dusty and flimsy paper magazines, I notice how propaganda has not changed in terms of continuing to center the white cis-hetero male gaze, hyper consumerism, and describing indigenous people across the globe as people and customs of the past. Decolonization is a constant war therefore, forefronts the contested relationship we have personally and collectively with our reckoning of practicing our roots, honoring the sacredness of all our relations, while also dismantling the U.S. war machine one day at a time.
The pre-Hispanic Oaxacan figure is shown holding a lighter while directing it to the blaze of fire on the right. What appears to be melting ICE cubes on the lower right-hand side is a symbolic scene of ICE melting through the actions of settler and fascists desecration.
The ceramic figure’s wide hips and thighs are symbolic of fertility and strength, the facial expression illustrating a look of fierce confidence in one’s body and stance. The beam of light in the center of their chest is an inlaid pyrite stone that glimmers in gold, symbolizing a reflection of true internal generational wealth, wisdom, and courage. Holding the lighter, is then a symbolic gesture towards continuing to use the tools around us as a means of tending to the symbolic (sometimes physical) fire of dignified rebellions from our ancestors and neighboring relatives in struggle. Assata said it best, it is our duty to fight.
Although it is scientifically proven that ice cannot catch on fire (because ice is already in an oxidized state), there is a type of energy that is needed to break through those bonds to release the oxygen. May the energy of spiritual refusal that was ignited in our ancestor’s mind and hearts live on through us, reminding us that colonization never ended and we must not surrender to colonial capture. Through strategic revolt, ancestral rage, and evoking the echoes of insurgency, systems like ICE can then become a flammable substance and burn until completely abolished.
Blogger:
kimethyst